Blog Response Part 1: The Lit Review
What's your purpose of your lit review? What are some of your themes? What sources will you use within each theme? Finally, then discuss what's next: where do you need to do to start drafting your lit review for next week?
Blog Response Part 2: Observations and Interviews
Last week, you did round robin type interview practice. Today, you'll be practicing observations for a minimum of 10 minutes. Take notes. Observe. Take down impressions. Once you do this, I want you look back over you interview responses and look over your notes from your observations. Based on the two, what are 2 conclusions you can draw about the student population at DU? How did the interviews and observations inform these conclusions? Be specific. Use your research.
All of this is due by the end of class on Thursday. You do NOT need to respond to your peers for this blog post.
Blog Response Part 2: Observations and Interviews
Last week, you did round robin type interview practice. Today, you'll be practicing observations for a minimum of 10 minutes. Take notes. Observe. Take down impressions. Once you do this, I want you look back over you interview responses and look over your notes from your observations. Based on the two, what are 2 conclusions you can draw about the student population at DU? How did the interviews and observations inform these conclusions? Be specific. Use your research.
All of this is due by the end of class on Thursday. You do NOT need to respond to your peers for this blog post.
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ReplyDeleteThe purpose of my lit review is to provide a better understanding of my topic and to show how all of my sources and connected to one another. They don't necessarily have to all be connected, but they should deliver the same "message" on each website and in each book. Not only will show how all of my sources are connected, but it will also show the foundation for how my paper will flow (in terms of order of paragraphs/topics).
ReplyDeleteSome themes that I might pull out of my already conducted research are: previous relationships, cause and affect of a relationship, and future relationships
I have everything in my mind prepared for what I want to actually write about. With that being said, I just need to officially put everything on paper, look at the student and professional examples once more, to get a better understanding and then get to work.
Based off of my observations and interview responses, a conclusion that i can draw about the DU population is that many of them seem to have a very "wild" side to them, but when it is actually time to learn, they are all willing to put in the required work. For example, Helen said "I love sounding well educated because I believe that how you speak, shows others the type of individual that you are." Later on in the interview she said "I love hanging out with my friends, especially on the weekends and at night." Not going fully into detail, one can infer numerous things when she made that comment.
On the flip side, while observing in the library, I see people that I personally know, and see how focused they are doing their work. Because I know them personally, I know that they also have a wild side. When interviewing my classmates, I saw that they all gave honest answers, which all had a recurring theme of "Getting down to business" when it was time; all of my classmates obviously are hard workers since they are in the next level of writing when being compared to the rest of the freshman class. A second conclusion that I came up with was that majority of students love being on there phone, or most have to keep an electronic device close to them. While I was conducting my personal interviews, everyone had their phone in their hand, as if they were waiting for a specific person to send them a text message. Everyone here in the library, too, has a cell phone device within 30 inches from them. I believe that our generation has grown up with phones, so it is more of a comfort thing for us to have our cell phones, or any electronic device with them at all times.
Part 1: The purpose of my lit review is so that I have my research organized and can easily see connections between all of my resources. Some of the key themes are biological effects, who benefits from music therapy and why, and intellectual development. Many of my sources go over each topic in some way or form. I am hoping that by showing a connection between these themes that my research paper will have a very nice flow to it and have transitions that make sense. To start my first draft of my lit review I need to begin summarizing all of my resources and sorting different facts and quotes I have based on their themes, and begin putting them all together. I will also make sure I have the connections between all of them figured out.
ReplyDeletePart 2: After observing students in the library as well as interviewing students in my class, I can tell you that DU students are one of a kind and unique. Everyone studying on the third floor of Anderson Academic Commons is wearing something different and has unique accessories, rather it a laptop case or backpack. Along with this, students also value experience and culture, and I discovered that many of them have plans to travel the world for family, understanding, and new memories. For some, the study abroad experience is the reason they chose University of Denver in the first place, so I am not at all surprised by the variety of places my peers intend to visit in the future. Everyone here really is their own unique person and they follow what they like to do, rather than what everyone else is doing.
My lit review will hopefully explore the different methods mentioned in the articles about controlling avalanches. In the research I’ve read so far, I’ve found several different methods of controlling, and my aim is to ultimately conclude which is the most effective. I hope that by examining my articles side by side, I will be able to draw together and rank how well each method works. This will eventually help me answer my research question, which deals with preventing avalanches and avalanche related deaths in Colorado.
ReplyDeleteThemes that I am exploring include explosives, mountain resorts, and avalanche controllers. I will use the sources that I have collected and annotated thus far.
I need to start pulling apart the relevant information to include in my lit review. I will then start to synthesize, compare and contrast the information.
When I interviewed students last week, one of the questions I asked was where the student came from, and how they believe that place influenced the person that they are today. The responses I received were varied, but most believed that where they were from me influenced their value systems or made them more diverse. In observing students that patronized the library cafe, I found that it is evident that many of the students that attend DU are influenced by where they come from based on dress, speech, and personality. Even though I was unable to actually interact with the people that I observed, I could tell based on how they interacted with the checkout people, or others in line that each person was diverse and influenced thoroughly by where they came from. Accents, style of dress, and ways of speaking can all indicate where a person comes from, which became evident to me through observation.
The purpose of my lit review is to help me understand the fields within my topic better by comparing the different sources in each field. I will be able to see what each source has to say and how they compare with another source that’s about the same exact topic. Themes that I have in mind are: computer vision syndrome, symptoms and effects of CVS, and preventive measures. I different sources for different themes because some sources focus on only one theme, while others have some information about multiple fields in my topic. I have a pretty solid idea of what this lit review should contain, that being said, I need to pick out a bit more information about my themes from a couple of sources so I can have more to write about and compare.
ReplyDeleteAccording to my observations in the library and interview responses from classmates, I believe it’s safe to say that the DU population is really social and students really enjoy the company of friends. On the third floor, almost every student sitting on a table has someone else with them on the table. And if there are multiple people on the table, the students are talking a lot in between their studies. From the interviews, a lot of people answered that the reason they enjoy their college experience so far is because of the people they met and their peers around them. Another conclusion that I came up with is that the DU population is really diverse. People are of many ethnicities on the third floor and hang out with their different friend groups. It’s easy to tell that these students traveled from different countries to get to DU. Also, just in our class alone there is a variety of ethnicities and there are many differences among us.
My lit review is really helping with narrowing down the topic of my paper into a manageable chunk of what I originally wanted to write about. The main theme coming up in my research is how to teach a computer what a 'meaning' is, how to define that in 'computer language' and how to then teach a computer to determine the meaning of a given text, relating many sentences together. Because this alone would be enough for a few papers, I think I'm going to pick just one part of the puzzle to work at. This will be determined later however because my choice will depend on the reading I'm going to do this weekend. Clearly I'll need to figure out my topic exactly and gather relevant research for the topic I end up selecting. The hardest part I'll need to finish up is narrowing down my topic.
ReplyDeleteBased on my research, I have decided visible and commonly meandered areas of the library are inefficient places to study. Over a span of ten minutes, I saw two people interrupt the same person studying to say hi and exchange a brief but likely pointless conversation for a minute or two. Then the person had to gather their thoughts again before returning to the work they were doing previously. Because many people are in the library, it makes it difficult to stay on task.
Additionally, I have found that it is harder to work efficiently when sitting at a table with someone you know and enjoy conversation with. I observed this when a brief tangent turned into a twenty minute long distraction with the person sitting at my table.
Blog Response Part 1:
ReplyDeleteThe purpose of my lit review is to look at the various articles to gain an overall perspective of the situation pertaining to the sustainability of marine ecosystems, and I will be to critically analyze the relationship between my various sources, and will provide me with a very good background of information. I will be researching the specifics about sustainability of coral reefs-- specifically due to climate changes. Some themes I will pull from my already conducted research will be various information concerning coral reefs. A main theme will be the sustainability currently in place in regard to coral reefs in marine ecosystems. These themes will connect back to my research question directly because they will help me answer my overarching question through synthesizing the various resources I have found. The theme of climate changes will relate to my research question through allowing me to speak about coral bleaching which is a main point in my argument. I will use the sources that I have spent time collecting and annotated so far in this process, focusing mainly on fact-base pieces, because these are the most pertinent to a topic of my stature. In order to start drafting my lit review next week, I need to construct a more concrete start to the organization process of my resources, through quotations and synthesizing the ideas brought up in my various academic articles.
Blog Response Part 2:
Based on both my research and my observations, I am able to assume that the majority of students at the University of Denver enjoy spending time with people like them. After my research conducted during class, I found (through records of students’ answers of the questions pertaining to their personalities and strongest personal traits), that students stick to people like them. This correlates directly with Dimitrius’ response to my research question—“Who do you like to spend your time with— what characteristics do you look for in a friend” and, “What are your strongest characteristic traits?” He told me that he likes to spend time with people like him— confident, self assured people, that are generally nice and considerate beings. While Dimitrius didn’t mention anything about clothing, I also drew a conclusion that many people that are consistently surrounded by one another tend to adopt similar characteristic traits, even beyond those of their personalities, such as their quirks, mannerisms, and their taste in clothing. I noticed this was a very consistent theme among the students I observed and their interactions.
My lit review will look at both the opinions of women in modern pop culture as well as the facts of the standing of women in modern America. I plan to use a combination of opinion articles as well as fact and poll based articles. The themes I have found thus far are: the standing of women in modern america, what is left for women to become equal in modern america, the negative opinion of covert sexuality of women in the media, and the positive reaction of female innocence in the media. To start drafting i need to find examples of each of these themes in the articles I have found so far and the similarities between them.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the interview and observation I came to a couple conclusions. My interview questions were: what is your favorite movie, what is your favorite place in the world and what are your non academic hobbies? The connections I made between the answers to this and the observations I made were that people at DU seem to well rounded in terms of academics as well as other hobbies and that pop culture like movies matter to them but that they tend to enjoy things that are acclaimed. I also noticed that the population of DU is very similar, during my observation I saw that people tend to dress similarly to people they spend time with, likewise during the interviews there was repetition of favorite movies.
The purpose of my lit review is to help me organize all of the sources that I've found, and to identify all of the relevant information that will eventually go into my paper. Additionally, my lit review will create a foundation on which I can build my paper as I will have identified both my sources, and the ways in which they connect or disconnect. Currently, there are two very prominent themes that I can pull from my writing, the first is that Pulp Fiction uses violence in order to emphasize the commonality and the disturbing nature of violence, rather than its typical Hollywood glorification. The second theme is precisely the opposite stating that Pulp Fiction uses such extreme violence in order to numb the viewer to it, simply further glorifying the portrayal of violence in media. The first theme is supported mainly by the books Tarantinian Ethics and Quentin Tarantino: Life at the Extremes, as well as interviews of Quentin Tarantino himself. The second theme is supported mainly by the works of Giroux and Kirsch. By pulling from these sources I'm gaining a much clearer picture of the information on my topic,and can already envision, in a rough sense, how my lit review is going to look. I feel that I simply need a few more facts, to finish up my secondary research so that I may go into my lit review. With that said I think I need to organize the information that I do have, so that I may draw the appropriate connections and include the relevant information coming into my lit review.
ReplyDeleteBased on my interviews and observations of DU students, there are two immediately apparent conclusions that I may draw. The first and most overwhelming of these conclusions, is that technology is an integral part to the lifestyle of a DU student. Upon observing the students on the first and second floors of the library, I realized that roughly 90% of them were using a laptop, and that nearly all of them had a cell phone on, or near them. This, combined with the fact that in my interviews one student’s favorite childhood memory was playing on his Gameboy, implies that DU students consider technology to be an important, and often necessary part of their lives. The second conclusion that I’ve been able to draw is that DU students appear to have a relatively friendly and cooperative demeanor. On the second and third floors of the library I observed no less than eight different groups of DU students working or studying together. I also observed that if approached or smiled at, roughly 80% of students would return a similarly positive response. Additionally, I noticed that at the entry to the library, students would not hesitate to hold open the door for one another, further implying a friendly attitude towards one another. This supports the behavior that I’ve seen in my interviews in which students exhibited a very open and cheerful demeanor in interviews, answering questions freely and opening themselves to a fair degree of conversation. Based on these two sources of analysis I am able to conclude that DU students are generally quite friendly to one another, and are willing to cooperate in certain situations.
The purpose of my lit review is to establish an outline of my topic and identify studies and research previously completed about dreams and their meanings. This will organize my secondary research. My themes are dream analysis, dream content, lucid dreaming, and cognitive process. For dream analysis and content, I will use the sources that focus on the systems for classifying dreams and the psychology behind the classification. For lucid dreaming and the cognitive process, I will compare on contrast the data from Malinowski and Stumbrys. I will need to start my draft with research about the cognitive process and explain how we dream before I can explain what people dream about and what those dreams mean.
ReplyDeleteWhen observing 18 people for 10 minutes I noticed multiple things. Out of the 18, there were 5 groups of 2 people, meaning that 8 people were studying alone and 10 were studying with a partner. 11 of the 18 had decals on their computers. 8 people grabbed their phones at least once during the 10 minutes. When the groups talked to each other, they spoke in whispers. 13 of the 18 had notebooks, but only 2 used them during the 10 minutes, and only 2 students had textbooks or research books. 8 people had food on the table and 12 had water bottles. Based on these observations, and my peer interviews, I can conclude that the students at DU are polite and studious. I can conclude that DU students are polite because they whisper, try not to draw attention to themselves, and are considerate of the other students studying around them. They brought food and drink to the library, eliminating the need to get up and distract the other students by movement. They also text instead of talk on the phone. I can conclude that DU students are studious for the interviews were taken seriously and the questions were answered using logic and reason. Also the students that I observed were focused and intent on their screens. Most of the whispered conversations were about problem help.
The purpose of my lit review, in a broad sense, is to organize my sources. Having my sources organized will help me see exactly what my sources are saying as a whole. I want this lit review to help me figure out some of the ideas that I should springboard off of to draw conclusions in my paper. The main themes that I will look at (for now at least) are designing for screen size, designing for touch capability, and designing for on-the-go computing. I can use the book that I have, "Hello World" to make comments on each of these things. The source about usage centered design really has some cool stuff to say about touch capability and screen size. The thing that I believe I am lacking currently is maybe one more source to talk to designing for on-the-go computing (how people interact with their computers on the go). I think that finding this source will be imperative and then it is just a matter of sifting through the content in my sources still and making connections.
ReplyDeleteOBSERVATION-INTERVIEW CONNECTION:
To preface, my observation was a little bit creepy, and it may have violated some ethical rules. I looked at people's computer screens to see how well they interacted with their computers. How quickly and adept they were able to interact with their computers said something about their overall adeptness with computers. My interview question was related to how adept people were with computers and I've gained the understanding that most of the DU population is mostly adept with computers on a scale from beginner to adept to advanced. In my interviews the students said they were adept and from what I noticed, students in the library were adept computer users as well. I also will say that people underestimate their proficiency with computers, as using a computer is so natural for students our age so most students are advanced in the field of computer application. The DU students tended to underestimate their proficiency.
The purpose of my lit review is to compile and simplify my sources for better understanding of my topics. Some of my themes include HIV/AIDS, composting, and possibly public health. The reason I say that public health is a possible theme is because while it is perfectly plausible for the topic of the paper, my main concern is time. Whether I have time to include public health or not, will determine whether it will remain as a theme to the end or not. With each theme, I plan to use online academic peer-reviewed journals and nonfictional books for each and every theme. I suppose for my topic, I just need to jump right into the sources separated by category to start drafting my lit review. Each and every one of my topic is a dense one in itself, so there isn't any entrance with a welcome mat for it. I just have to jump the wall for this one.
ReplyDeleteBased on the two conclusions, what I can draw about the student population at DU are many things as well as several patterns. My observations took place on the upper level of Anderson Academic Commons. Most students are young adults, no younger than the age of 19 and no older than the mid-twenties. Also, they are very focused on their academics, but do not committ completely to their academics as they still have hobbies which they enjoy. Both the observations and interviews informed the conclusion that the majority of the student population were young adults. The observations, showed the serious focus for academics. The interviews suggest that the students are humans with feelings and likes and dislikes, and hobbies which they like to do to decompress from the stresses of their academics. Most of the students in the observation are on their laptops. It would have been concluded that they were all studying but the information from the interviews suggest that there may be some students decompressing either with video games, movies, tv shows or whatever they enjoy.