Tag: weekof8/2
Dylan Lopez Research Portfolio
At the beginning of the summer, as we read about the challenges of organizational culture and diversity and inclusion, the question that kept recurring to me was: “Why aren’t CEOs and other leaders held accountable for creating measurable progress in these areas?” After all, they are held accountable for performance in so many other areas of their businesses. I was curious to find out if any research had been done on the roles leaders play in creating change.
A few things happened as we transitioned into Unit 2 that redirected my focus. First, as I read the Expanding the Canon blog posts of my classmates, I began to see that issues of bias and discrimination extend beyond the boundaries of organizations into society where they are pervasive and systemic. The idea of focusing on the role of CEOs, while important, seemed too narrow to me. Second, our classmate Sherri Holmes’s post on “Algorithm-Driven Hiring Tools: Innovative Recruitment or Expedited Disability Discrimination?” by Lydia X. Z. Brown, Ridhi Shetty, and Michelle Richardson affected me on a personal level because I had recently taken an online personality test during a routine job application. And lastly, I watched the documentary Persona, which explored the dark side of personality testing and artificial intelligence (AI), including the risks for discrimination against many protected groups. I suddenly realized that AI technologies for human resources could be systematizing bias on a massive scale, so I decided to turn my research focus to this topic.
In Unit 2, I immersed myself in the topic of AI in HR by searching for and reading material from a wide variety of sources. Using my Research Plan as a guide, I found an active conversation taking place in scholarly journals, trade publications, popular websites, and in various other outlets such as YouTube, TED Talks, podcasts, blogs, and corporate websites. I enjoy hunting for great information, so my research process is usually to read everything I can find and to look for ideas and patterns that resonate with me. In the past, I have done this in a haphazard way, but all the tools we used in this unit, such as the three listed below, helped me stay organized and kept me from chasing some ideas that were off on a tangent.
As a result of this more focused process, I found many great sources, including the following which I have annotated here:
The more reading I did, the more I realized that it was not so easy to sort all of my sources into clearly defined “Pro-AI” and “Anti-AI” categories. Instead, many sources fell into a kind of gray area where both advantages and disadvantages of AI were discussed and explored. At first, I thought this meant I wasn’t doing my research properly, but I now see that the conversation taking place right now is actually in a kind of gray area. As a society, we don’t know yet what to make of AI in HR. Many of the major problem areas have been identified, but we are still feeling our way through the issues that are more subtle. Even the harshest critics of the use of AI have a tiny bit of hope that it may turn out to be just fine. But one thing I noted is that the conversation hasn’t really heated up to the point where our government is paying enough attention and getting involved. Part of me worries that our representatives are going to get involved when it’s too late. Ultimately, my work in this unit has inspired me to add my own thoughts and ideas to the conversation. If I can reach even a small audience, I think I will have done my part to move the discussion forward.
Research Portfolio- Kate
Julia research portfolio
Research Portfolio – Zoe Miller
Overview for Week of 8/2
We’re wrapping up Unit 2 this week, and your primary focus will be on assembling your research portfolio. This set of texts is kind of a checkpoint on the way to your research project, an opportunity to assess what you have to work with and what you might be able to make from it. It’s not an end in and of itself, but rather a stopover.
A few reminders about the items that the portfolio will contain (taken from the unit 2 assignment sheet )
- at least 6 annotations (2 paragraphs each, 1 of summary, 1 of discussion)
- focusing flowchart
- research plan
- complicating your research activity
- rounding out the conversation worksheet
- your unit 2 reflection (see assignment sheet for prompt)
In short, this portfolio will represent your research progress, from the inception of your idea, through locating and considering sources, and including your efforts to broaden that conversation to better understand the issues under consideration.
As you advance towards this goal, then,
- be sure to read through feedback on the above assignments and your discussion posts (I’ll get you feedback on your draft annotations ASAP)
- refresh your memory on writing an effective summary (review this handout on summary)
- review the rubric and assignment overview on the unit 2 assignment sheet
- email me with any questions
Read on for the week’s agenda.
Reading
- “Individual change won’t create gender equality in organizations”
- your assigned jump-out link from that text (check out the announcement on Blackboard for details)
Writing
- write your unit 2 reflection
- complete your source annotations
- assemble your research portfolio. This will come in as a single blog post with embedded PDF files. Check out this post for instructions on how to do that:
- respond to this week’s discussion prompts by the end of the day on Friday (this is a 1-day extension). See post below:
Note that I’m going to push back the next assignment (the project proposal) to next week, so that you’ll have some more time to work through your ideas. You can look for more info on that in next week’s overview on Monday.
Instructions for creating a blog post with embedded links and files
For the research portfolio, you will be submitting multiple documents all in a single post. Please follow these instructions to get everything in there so that it’s easy to read.
Your Unit 2 research reflection (answering the prompt on the assignment sheet) will be the body of the post–just create a post as you usually would on the blog.
- Title your post with your name and “Research Portfolio”
- Categorize it as “Research Portfolio”
- Tag it with [your name], “unit2,” “weekof8/2,” and “portfolio”
Add these PDF file attachments within the same post:
6 different annotations (please post them individually, so I can easily see what’s there)
Your supporting materials: focusing flowchart, complicating your research, and Rounding out the conversation exercises (the same things you submitted on Bb, but saved as PDFs and attached here)
Here’s how to do this:
- prepare your documents
- save each annotation individually as a PDF (this makes them easier to read because they will just open without a download)–you can do this in Word or Pages or Google Docs in the “Save As” options
- use clear and direct file names (i.e. the title of the text you’re discussing or something like “Annotation #1”)
- once your files are ready to upload
- click on the “+” button to add a block
- scroll down through the Blocks menu to the “Media” section
- choose “File” and then “Select Files”
- choose the first file that you’re uploading, and click “Open”
- you’ll see your file as an embedded link, listed by its file name
- click “Enter” to move to a new line
Repeat this process for each of the file attachments (there should be at least 9 attachments–6 annotations and then 1 for your focusing flowchart, 1 for complicating your research, and 1 for Rounding out the conversation)
Embed a link to your Research Plan post:
- locate your Research Plan post (updated if need be to reflect current direction of your project)
- copy the url
- click the “+” to add a block
- scroll down through the Blocks menu to “Embeds”
- click on “WordPress”
- paste the copied url into the text editor window, and click “Embed”
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!
Discussion prompts for Week of 8/2
In this article, Alison Wynn (a researcher at Stanford) summarizes her own recent article, in which she analyzed the findings of a year-long case study of a Silicon Valley tech company’s gender equality initiative.
As is typically the case with summaries, an author is trying to do justice to the original text (representing it for what it is), while also working toward their own distinct purpose. Here, for Wynn, that is bottom-lining the findings for a different audience and objective–trying to open up a new kind of conversation around the role that organizations (and not just individuals) must play.
Pay attention to how she works with research in here. Within this article, Wynn provides a lot of linked resources, which function both as a sort of bibliography (here are some of the sources I’m working with…) and as a reading list for those who want more (if you think this is interesting, check this out….). Consider the first one, which links to this article, itself a compendium of a whole bunch of different sources.
Giving her readers access to this lets Wynn build upon that informational foundation without taking up a lot of space in her text. It also gives interested readers a lot more to work with (and a lot more reason to trust Wynn as knowing her stuff). Each of you will follow up on one of the other resources she links and give us a sense of what’s in there and how it’s valuable (both to Wynn and to us, readers who might be looking to use this new knowledge).
Also pay attention as you read to her section headings–she’s setting up a careful logical chain. These headings are kind of like breadcrumbs (think Hansel and Gretel) for the reader to follow 
We can learn from that, of course, about a way to organize our ideas to make them as usable as possible for our readers. As we head into Unit 3, that’s going to be an important consideration–not just writing for ourselves or for me (a teacher reader), but for an audience who needs to hear what you have to say and needs to be able to act on it or make use of it in some way.
Once you’ve read through Wynn’s article, follow up on your assigned link (see the announcement on Blackboard for those assignments). Then, post your responses to these 2 questions (everyone should answer both):
- Give us a capsule summary of the linked article/resource that you explored. What is it? what’s in there? what’s valuable about it? what does it add to Wynn’s article?
- Who do you think would most benefit from reading this article, and why? (in other words, who do you think her target audience is or ought to be?) Select one passage (a sentence or two) from the article, and explain why you think this segment would work especially well for that group of readers. Please quote the passage in your response.