Research Portfolio – Page 4 – WRT 205 Summer 2021

Research plan: Julia

What question is guiding your research? (What do you want your research to understand?)

I am using my research to help figure out the reasoning behind the lack of representation of women in STEM, more specifically in finance. STEM and finance have always had a dominant male presence, and I would like to understand that although more women are getting STEM-related degrees than ever, why there is still a lack of representation. By researching both the biological and social reasons for this issue, I will be able to better comprehend the problem.

Why this question? (Help us understand how it connects to your career/personal interests)

I am interested in researching more about women’s lack of representation in finance because, in a world where equity is becoming more critical as each day passes, I think it will impact my career. Also, a woman majoring in finance and accounting, I believe that it is beneficial to understand how to bring more representation to the industry. Even now, I am beginning to see this topic appear. I can see it even this year, as I am the only female in this class year to enter into the OVF program at Whitman.

How will your professional/internship/organizational/course work inform your inquiry? (What connections can you see with the work that you are a part of in the world beyond the course?)

As stated in the previous paragraph, it personally, as well as professionally, impacts my life. It seems as though every professional event that I attend with an organization is an event to promote women in finance or listen to someone who has beaten the odds and become a woman in a senior position. It seems as though there is a ‘we have to stick together’ mentality in the industry because there are so few women that are present in certain roles. Even in a few of my classes, there are not a lot of women taking the class it seems like. By understanding the reasons why there are not more women trying to obtain careers in finance, I will be able to better understand the subject.

What fields (academic and professional) matter most in your inquiry? (Where are you going to be looking for source material?)

I believe that professional fields will matter most in my inquiry, however, I feel that academic articles will also be important. By fielding professional articles, I will be able to find views that use logic and statistics to back up their views. I would also like to get some personal stories from media sources like TED talks, or news channels. Academic sources will be more important in helping me understand the biological reasoning behind the lack of representation of women in finance/STEM. As always, I will be using the SU library database, the TED talk website, along Google to find my sources.

Research Plan-Ed

What question is guiding your research? (what do you want to use your research to understand?)

The question that I planned on guiding my research was disclosing invisible disabilities. Invisible disabilities are disabilities not immediately apparent to others. Although not apparent to others, due to their unrecognizable traits, invisible disabilities are ever present for the impacted individuals. Examples of invisible disabilities include ADHD, epilepsy, chronic pain, hearing impairment, cerebral palsy, and diabetes. This is just a small list of diagnoses that impact many individual’s lives. These examples have a variety of symptoms that are worthwhile to study because having an invisible disability compels an individual to weigh the risks of sharing or concealing their diagnosis.

My initial guiding research question was to only consider disclosing an invisible disability in an interview but as I’ve started my research, I may include disclosing throughout a career as well. I’ve found some interesting research on that as well.

• Why this question? (help us to understand how it connects to your career/personal interests)

Why? I have an invisible disability, so it is a personal interest of mine.

• How will your professional/internship/organizational/course work inform your inquiry? (what connections can you see with the work that you’re part of in the world beyond our course?)

I have personal connections in the world of disabilities. People often make assumptions about people living with disabilities, which can be isolating at times and negatively impact relationships. As a student with an IEP growing up and being paraded at times to the Special Education room, I often felt that stigma. Yes, one of “those” students. An individual can feel shame for being laughed at for having a disability (Gray, Pakinson, & Dunbar, 2015). Therefore, to avoid this stigma, avoiding disclosing is self-protection. So, the professional question will always be…do you disclose…when do you disclose, and I suppose how do you disclose? This research I’m doing may always be with me well into the world beyond this course.

• What fields (academic and professional) matter most to your inquiry? (where are you going to be looking for source material?)

I will be looking into the fields of professional journals as well as individuals who work in the field of disability services. If at all possible, I’d like to interview some employers although I’m not sure if I’d get an honest response or a politically correct one. I’ll also try to find some first-hand accounts as well in my research which may present some valuable insights.

References:

Gray, A. W., Parkinson, B., & Dunbar, R. I. (2015). Laughter’s influence on the intimacy of self-disclosure. Human Nature: An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective, 26(1), 28-43.

Research Plan – Zoe Miller

I am using my research to understand more about why there are people who are discriminated against for something they cannot control and is no one else’s business. I would like to also understand what effects being discriminated for something like that has on people. While this is the case for most qualities that people are discriminated against for, in this case I am researching people who are a part of the LGBTQ+ community.

The reason I am interested in researching discrimination in the LGBTQ+ community is because a lot of information has come to light regarding it over the last few years. I do not think that it is fair for people to be discriminated against based off of something that only differs to what people are “used to” at home. I also think that the fact that people care so much about qualities and aspects about other people that have absolutely nothing to do them is interesting but also do not understand it.

I am an ally of the LGBTQ+ movement and know a few people who are a part of the community. It is being reported all over the news and social media and I would like to expand my knowledge on it. I have a disability that people are discriminated against for, while I have experienced a little bit about what it is like to have issues with people because of that disability, I would like to expand my knowledge on discrimination against other topics.

Professional fields matter most to my inquiry because there are more people who are aware that they are a part of this community and who may not necessarily rub it in everyone’s faces but who are also not hiding it in the professional world rather than in the academic world. I plan to continue to look for personal journals with experiences and news articles or posts on social media that discuss what people have had to deal with and what the effects and consequences, if any, there were.

Research is a creative endeavor

As you’re continuing with your research, I encourage you to remember this: research is a creative process.

Here’s why that matters:

whatever your topic, whatever your motivation, when you research you are making something new–a new set of ideas, new questions, a new collection of perspectives
because research is a creative endeavor, there isn’t a single *right* way to do it–you’re not assembling an Ikea bookshelf; you’re creating something brand new that hasn’t been before and that is unlike anyone else’s project (and it’s totally fine to have leftover parts 😉 )
when you’re entering new, uncharted territory, it’s helpful to have models and maps–tutorials for different search tools (such as the SU Libraries how-to pages) offer a lot of value, in addition to the notetaking and analytical reading work we’ve been doing in class
you can have fun with this work–you’re charting your own course to a large extent, and you can be inventive with your choice of sources (inputs) and products (outputs)

The note-taking work that you’ve been doing this past week is part of this generative process. As you read, think critically, and respond to your sources’ ideas in your notes, you are beginning to shape your own perspective on the subject at hand, and ultimately your own contribution to the larger body of thought on this subject. That’s why I’m asking you to spend some real time on taking notes. Note-taking is where your creative thought-work begins.

A few suggestions to keep in mind:

use tools for what they’re good for: the SU Libraries website is good for finding specialized material by scholars and other experts. It will also give you full-text access to newspapers from all over the world. When you’re looking for that stuff, go there. Primary sources sometimes pop up there, but are more likely to be found on the open web, where anyone can publish. When you’re looking for that stuff, it makes sense to start with Google.
keep in mind that sources come in many forms–not just articles and books, but radio features, podcasts, images, documentaries and other videos, interviews/Q&As, etc. You’re not limited to traditional kinds of texts.
jump straight to Advanced Search–filter your results more on the front end, and you’ll have fewer to sift through. Consider adding multiple search terms and placing limits on date, type of publication, language, etc. Note that when adding search terms in Advanced Search, you have a dropdown menu that defaults to “All Fields” (term appears anywhere in the text). You can also select “abstract” (term is significant enough to appear in the summary of the text). Check out this image:
use sources to leapfrog–check out authors’ bibliographies for ideas, pay attention to the Subject headings or Keywords in the citation entry of a database search. Check out the image below–in your list of search results, hover over the Preview+ option to pull up the full citation, and then check out the Subjects listed–these are the terms this database uses to catalog related material. You can incorporate these as search terms, and it’s kind of like browsing the physical shelf in the library for other similar materials.

screenshot of full bibliographic citation showing how to do subject searching

Overview for Week of 7/19

As we approach the midpoint of the course, it’s a good time to take stock of where you’re at–any missing assignments you need to catch up on, any discussion posts or replies you didn’t complete, how your research work is coming along. If you have any questions, please reach out to me by email–we can chat that way or set up a time to talk by phone/Zoom to make sure you’re clear on where you stand.

This week, you’ll be continuing your work toward the research portfolio; locating, reading, and taking notes on sources; and firming up your research plan. Read on for an overview of this week’s work.

Reading

“Changing organizational culture: from embedded bias to equity and inclusion” by Cori Wong (on Blackboard)
Chapters 8 and 9 of They Say/I Say (“As a result” and “You mean I can just say it that way?”)–note that chapter 9’s title was incorrect on the schedule of assignments. Sorry about that.
possible sources for your research portfolio as you locate them

Writing/discussion

Preliminary notes exercise (submit through Bb dropbox by Wednesday, 7/21)–the goal here is to catalog the sources you’re finding and begin sketching out the different perspectives they have to offer
Research plan–review page 3 of the unit 2 assignment sheet (submit on blog by Sunday, 7/25). Categorize this as “Research Portfolio,” and tag it with “plan,” “weekof7/19,” and [your name].
Discussion work on blog (here are the prompts)

Making use of this week’s readings

This week’s discussion prompts focus on your research work and ask you to share how your research process has been taking shape. This week’s assigned readings are kind of a backdrop–not front-and-center as they have been in our blog discussion–so I want to take a few minutes to suggest how we might synthesize and make use of that material as we forge ahead.

“Can company culture survive Zoom?” is a brief piece that I included because I think the impact of these last 17 months is inevitably on our mind as we look ahead to what work and school environments will be in the days ahead. As many of you have noted in your recent posts, your experience of the Covid-19 pandemic has influenced the way you’re thinking about your research topic (and in many cases even the topic itself–you’re interested in things that might not have been on your radar previously). Given that the pandemic continues to be part of the context in which we research and write, I think it’s useful to hear from others grappling with similar questions.

In particular, I find this passage from Sabri Ben-Achour’s article provocative:

“Why do they choose to work for one organization versus another is often based on their perception of how they fit,” Bell said. “I also think company culture is really important for signaling what companies value.”
Are we an innovation company? Are we a traditional company? What is the point of this company? How is disagreement handled here? Is seniority more important than innovation? Are rules to be bent, broken, or followed with precision? How are ideas challenged? None of this is handled or transmitted through the employee handbook, Bell pointed out. It’s transmitted through relationships.”

In placing the focus on relationships rather than handbooks or mission statements, I think Ben-Achour and his interview subjects add something valuable to the discussion.

The other texts I asked you to read this week also offer some valuable perspectives. I urge you to think about the guidance in the TSIS chapters at hand (5 and 6), which nudge us to engage a range of perspectives in our research (including those we don’t necessarily agree with) AND to be sure to explain ourselves to our readers (to get really direct about explaining why they ought to care about what we have to say). That last point is really important. Be thinking about that as you proceed.

(I can’t help but read the title of chapter 6 in Joy Behar’s voice–I’m not sure if it’s intentional on the part of the writers, but that’s how it echoes in my head. Not sure what I mean? Here’s Behar discussing it, and there’s a mountain of gifs of Fred Armisen’s impression of Behar, which she seems to find pretty entertaining.)

Gifs aside, the point echoes–we can’t presume that people will appreciate why we think something is important if we don’t tell them. So, tell them!

Finally, Chapter 2 of Rewriting (“Forwarding”) gives us another analogy that we’ll be making use of throughout the coming weeks. Anytime we work with source material, we are moving it from one context (that of the original author) to another context (our own), and it’s useful to have some terminology that explains what we’re doing and why. “Forwarding” gives us that–ways to talk about the different uses to which we can put source materials.

We’ll be making use of all this a lot more in the weeks ahead, so please make sure to read these chapters, and ask any questions that you might have.

Overview for Week of 7/12

I’ll be getting you feedback on your recent posts and on your focusing flowchart within the next 48 hours, so please be on the lookout for that, and use that to get started on your research for sources for your research portfolio.

Read on for the particulars of what’s due this week, but first, let me give you a bit more of the Big Picture of Unit 2.

In this Unit, you will be assembling a set of sources–representing a mix of voices of various stakeholders, a variety of source types (including primary, scholarly, and others), and a range of perspectives. Your primary tasks in this unit will be making decisions about what sources to include and becoming conversant with those sources. In this unit, we’ll focus on these elements:

locating sources (working with the SU library databases and other tools)
evaluating sources (assessing their value, credibility, and utility to your project)
writing about your sources (in a couple of note-taking and discussion exercises, and in longer annotations that are part of your portfolio)

You’ll be building a research project with these and other sources down the road in Unit 3. This unit will let you take your time developing a strong foundation for that work, so that your research can be intentional, critical, and productive (and not just quote-dropping or patching together other people’s words and ideas). This will allow you to make something new, a valuable contribution to the world of knowledge on the subject you choose to explore.

Read on for this week’s tasks.

Reading:

“Can company culture survive Zoom?”
chapters 6 and 7 of TSIS
chapter 2 (“Forwarding”) of Rewriting
this overview of different types of sources

Writing and discussion work:

discussion posts (your posts due Wednesday, replies to classmates’ posts due Saturday). Here’s the link to the prompts.
2 note-taking exercises (1 due Wednesday, and the other due Sunday)–this begins with you locating possible sources, and then working with 2 different techniques spelled out on this handout on notetaking techniques

WRT 205 notetaking techniques Download

Types of sources

As you see on the unit 2 assignment sheet you will need to have at least 1 primary source and 1 scholarly source in your research portfolio.

We’ve talked a bit about scholarly sources already–take a look back at this post for a refresher.

Now let’s talk about what a primary source is.

A primary source is typically one based on direct first-hand experience or observation of an event or issue. What constitutes a primary source will vary by discipline/research topic. For example, in history, a primary source might be a document or artifact that dates to the time period under consideration (a letter written by a soldier during the Civil War, for example, or a photograph taken at that moment in time). In literature, a primary source might be the poem or other literary work that the author is analyzing. In the sciences (both social sciences and “hard” sciences), primary sources might be data from experiments conducted or field notes recording one’s observations or actual artifacts from that research process.

There are certainly situations in which opinion polls/surveys constitute primary sources, as well, providing fresh, direct insight into attitudes on a topic. Similarly, narrative sources (blog posts, interviews, autobiographical writings) might constitute primary sources, too. The basic idea is that a primary source gets us as close as possible to a particular phenomenon or topic, providing us information that is as unfiltered and direct as can be had.

And let’s consider what a secondary source is.

By contrast, most of the sources you find yourself working with are secondary sources, which include primary sources among their evidence. Such sources provide you with commentary and analysis that is at least one step removed from the topic itself. Note that both types–primary and secondary–are valuable in any research inquiry. Primary sources, because they are so individualized, really don’t work in isolation. They need the context of additional analysis, such as is provided by secondary sources, to be meaningful. This is yet one more reason why an array of sources, serving different functions and representing different perspectives, is so critical to the success of researched writing.

We need a balanced diet of information.

And one more note on the subject of source types: it’s worth striving for a “balanced diet” of information. Scholarly sources are kind of like broccoli–maybe not as tasty and easy as some other types, but with a lot of valuable nutrients. They’re good for the overall health of our inquiry, even if they’re not our favorite go-to item. For more on this analogy, I encourage you to watch this really accessible and interesting TED talk by JP Rangaswami:

Moving on from Unit 1

Let’s start pulling some things together. Here are a few lessons from our first unit of the course that I hope you will carry forward in our next projects:

We need to understand a text’s rhetorical situation before we can work with it—over the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at some sets of texts that talk around some of the same issues but from different angles. Looking closely, we can trace many of these differences to facets of their writing situation: i.e. different audiences, different purposes, different credentials/experiences of the authors, different contexts. In order to figure out how much stock to put in folks’ ideas, what ideas of our own we might build upon them, or how to use these sources to help explain ideas to other people, we MUST first understand the texts themselves and where they’re coming from.
Understanding a text’s rhetorical situation also gives us a window in to whether and how it works, and what we might learn from its example as writers—we can see how writers try to appeal to their readers (using 2^nd person, anticipating and responding to their concerns, styling their text to be visually engaging). We can see how writers build their arguments (linking evidence to claims, providing the reader with opportunities to follow their chain of thought back through hyperlinks to sources or citations). We can see writers drawing on their personal experiences to tell us stories about how they came to wonder about something and how they developed their understanding of it. By watching how other people do this work, we prepare ourselves to do it, too.
We need a variety of tools—we’ve examined how-to texts (from Harris and TSIS) and content-focused ones; we’ve watched videos; we’ve discussed. We’re coming to appreciate the complexity of our big topic area and to see how we’re only really going to make progress toward our understanding by engaging with a variety of resources and voices. That’s not just an academic exercise for us in this course; that’s a core guideline for research. As researchers and writers, we will also need that multi-faceted set of perspectives if we’re ever going to make progress toward understanding. AND we need to use a multitude of tools in presenting our ideas to our readers—whether that’s templates, graphic representations of data, varying levels of formality, etc. Furthermore, this sort of diversity of perspectives and approaches is a core value for organizations–an essential component of fair and effective collaboration.

So let’s continue. We’re growing our body of knowledge this week through accretion—each of you is adding something to it with the article you’re going to explain to the rest of us, and reviewing your classmates’ posts will be an important part of this week’s work. As we move forward, we’ll continue to learn from each other even as we head down individual research paths.

One final point, summary isn’t just a hoop for you to jump through. It’s how you test yourself to ensure that you’re conversant enough with the text to work with it in your own writing. If you can’t effectively summarize it, you probably shouldn’t be working with it in a project, because you can’t be sure you’ll fairly characterize its perspective and utilize its full value. A careful definition and description of a source (as part of a summary that also details its main take-away points) is a necessary precondition to be able to work further with that material.

Ready to move on? The unit 2 assignment sheet is available here and on Blackboard. Take a look, and let’s get ready to go.

Unit 2 assignment

Now that we’ve built a foundation of knowledge about organizational culture, it’s time to take part in some of these ongoing discussions. We’ll be using the analogy of research as conversation throughout the remaining units—we will be both listening and ‘talking.’

Your work in this Unit will build toward 2 written products–a research plan that will guide your work, and a portfolio that will constitute the foundation for that work. Please read through the overview linked below.

You can also download the Unit 2 assignment sheet and schedule on Blackboard.

WRT-205-summer-2021-unit-2 Download