Month: September 2020

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Unit 3 Reflection

The work for my Unit 2 Project informed the ultimate aim for my final project. After Unit 1, and throughout Unit 2 my research got extremely broad. I was interested in how what we learned from our readings could affect the world at large, and wanted to find out more about that. After researching from that perspective and getting a much larger view of the discussion, I realized I needed to dial in on something more specific. But this wasn’t hard to do necessarily, because the question I theorized in my Unit 2 reflection – could openness and trust in communication be the answer to conflict in diverse settings? – really starts at an early age. The tools discussed in the articles I read about diversity and inclusion trainings at jobs could be done during schooling, and not just revisited once in the workforce.

Once I began to think of my theory in this way – starting at a young age – I realized the answers to my questions were simpler than I thought. Most of the work done to fix racial conflicts is cleanup. It’s fixing wrongly formed habits and opinions that began at a young age. So my findings and implications from my research could be applied to youth, instead of aiming at the whole world, like it felt like I was beginning to do in Unit 2.

Out of doing this work, starting in a small topic, expanding to a larger discussion, and dialing back into a small topic, I learned many useful tools for doing research. One of the newest techniques to me was in the “complicating your research” activity. I never thought to look for what I wasn’t looking for to find what I am looking for, but it proved to be useful in finding holes in my research. I learned how to utilize a counter argument to my advantage. It was interesting to take my research and reword my findings into a way specific for my audience. Doing the steps for this assignment made this process very clear, and I could see what I learned transform into something I could then put into an informative piece for others.

The value this assignment had for me was in my topic. As I discussed in previous blog posts, racial conflict has always been an interest to me and what could possibly help solve it. This interest guided my research and brought me to my ultimate project/idea. It’s interesting because the idea of implementing diversity/cultural classwork into K-12 education has been tossed around in national conversations recently, and actually became a reality for states like New Jersey. I thought of something like this as a huge step for change, but not as impactful as I believe it to be now through my research. The articles I read show a clear solution to conflicts in groups with diversity, and those conflicts can be avoided early-on instead of cleaned up after the fact, like the majority are today. Without the small topic to broader discussion to small topic style of research we did in this class I’m not sure I could have come to the same clear conclusion. The work I did in this class will most definitely inform my work with research moving forward, and I’m happy to have gone through this process.

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Week of 7/27 Discussion

Safely back to school after coronavirus closures

This powerpoint is similar to the style of powerpoint I’m doing for my Research Project, with a similar audience. The topic is on how to safely return to schools after closures from coronavirus. It’s an informative powerpoint for students and teachers, with a writing style similar to what mine is for my project. I really like the layout of this powerpoint and its integration into the website. It looks extremely professional and well done, and the writing is all very professional. What I can take from this powerpoint and bring into my own is the layout for how the powerpoint progresses. The slides are simple and ask simple questions and provide simple answers. What’s different about this one from mine is it’s more of an interact style of powerpoint, simply just due to the fact corona would prevent it from actually being presented to anyone. I want to use its simple style, and utilizing single-word slides for my own project like this one, because I think it does a good job of engaging the audience.

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Research Project

For my research project, I constructed an informative powerpoint meant for Primary School Educators and Administrators. The power point is the product of research based on group work in diverse settings, such as the office or class room. The goal of the powerpoint is to inform my audience of the findings of my research, which indicate a positive relationship in group communication between openness and trust, and successful group outcomes. The theory is that if these two variables promote successful outcomes in diverse settings, the tools to practice these techniques should be taught at a young age, and not at the college or professional level. My research indicated that minority employees have negative experiences with “Inclusion and Diversity” trainings that are common for the workplace in today’s world, because they only singled them out more and put them in uncomfortable positions. The goal with starting students on cultural awareness and group diversity work early, is that the micro-aggressions that come to light in adult life in the workplace can be prevented from happening in the first place. As mentioned in the powerpoint, opinions and communication skills are formulated at a young age. The goal of my powerpoint is to help students grow into healthy contributing members of a diverse society. My powerpoint promotes and outlines the idea of yearly, state-required course learning for students in the grades K-12. With my audience in mind – youth educators and administrators – my powerpoint discusses my research, its findings, implications, and how my suggestions can be implemented into my audience’s work.

Research Project
Annotated Bibliography
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Project Proposal

My project will be aimed at Elementary School educators and administrators in order to teach them about the research I’ve done of success with diversity. My research will outline ways in which youth educators can better prepare students for the world as people with good communication skills and understandings for other cultures.

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Week of 7/20 Discussion

  1. In How To Create A Culture Manifesto for Your Organization (And Why It’s a Good Idea), Mollie West compiles the mission statements from various companies and how they used them, in order to convince readers of the importance of Culture Manifestos. She makes the strengths and uses of the company’s manifestos clear though laying them out in bullet points. She goes back and forth between her own analysis of the manifestos, and information on the manifestos themselves. The companies are laid out in different sections in bold underline and make it easy for readers to scroll through them and read her reasoning why they’re effective. She aims to reach an audience with influence in companies in order to help influence their systems with her recommendations.
  2. In analyzing West’s article for her target audience and her style she uses to reach them, I’ve thought about what type of audience I would like to reach with my research project and why. Because college is the stepping stone into the real world, and college graduates will have a great influence on the world they step into after college, I first believed college students would be a good target audience for the information I’d like to share with my research. But college students already have strongly developed opinions, and this will miss many young adults who choose not to attend college. The type of information I’d like to share will have to do with the trust and openness in communication discussed in my research that has a possibility to help better hone diversity. Learning to do these things in groups may better prepare people for the world beyond their childhood homes. Because of this, and reconsidering, I decided this type of basic communication skill should be something taught to everyone, and at a young age, maybe as young as Elementary school. The research I’ve done, if it ever came to permanent findings for a solution to race conflict, could be developed into programs designed to help young children learn, understand and celebrate other’s differences.
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Week of 7/13 Discussion

  1. “Skillfull,” linked in Alison Wynn’s Individual Change Won’t Create Gender Equality in Organizations, is an organization with the intent of connecting the 70% of Americans without college degrees with employers, educators and lawmakers based on skill sets. The website has resources for employers as well as the unemployed to get involved. What this adds to Wynn’s article is an outlet for the disparities she discussed to be helped. Women, or disadvantaged people can use this resource to pursue their endeavors.
  2. Her target audience in citing this website is women without college degrees. I gather this from the website’s mission statement which says, “Skillful works with employers, educators, policymakers and others to help the nearly 70% of Americans without college degrees get good jobs based on the skills they have or the skills they can learn – creating new opportunities for success in the digital era.” Wynn’s article is about a disparity of women in tech, and this linked article provides a resource for people without college degrees to get jobs in tech. Further, the website’s resources provide a place for women with a desire to get involved in tech to sign up, people who may have come straight from Wynn’s article.