Strategies for a Graceful Dismount
Image retrieved from https://every-tuesday.com/freebie-november-2016-desktop-wallpapers/
Happy November and welcome back to our VFAM blog!
For this blog post, our group would like to take a moment to reflect on our progress during the last three weeks and discuss our future goals as well as strategies to attain those goals. This time we have also implemented a visual aide to map out our moments of significant change from the beginning up till now. Continue reading to catch up to date with our project development!
Weekly Objectives
| Objectives | Achievements | |
| Week 7
(Oct. 16 – 22 ) |
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| Week 8
(Oct. 23 – 29 ) |
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| Week 9
(Oct. 30 – Nov. 5 ) |
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Upcoming Objectives
- Finish collecting and inputting informations onto the food asset map
- Gather feedbacks from VCH public health workers during the feedback session, and teach new workers to use the VFAM
- Create infographic based on project documents, evaluation forms and our project experiences
- To present our project poster
- Hand in Excel retail store & City of Van documents, hard copies of evaluation forms, collated results for evaluation forms, final report, feedback
Moment of Significant Change & Graph
We have reflected on our progress throughout the past two months and created the graph below to map out moments of significance. The graph presents two lines, one for defining our knowledge and skill sets and one to represent our emotions. As you can see, the orange line representing emotions fluctuated a lot during the past few weeks as we encountered uncertainties and anxiety. However, these hardships and challenges ultimately had a positive impact on our learning and development. According to Shulman (2005), a successful learning does not only include the understanding from the sake of knowledge but also the engagement in skilled professional practice under the presence of uncertainties, anxiety and risk.
Each moment of significance indicated on the graph is further elaborated and discussed below.
Week 2: Group Assigned
On week 2 our knowledge and skills started at a relatively low position as we were only 2 lectures in with some prior knowledge and experience from LFS 250. We had a very basic understanding for the project from the brief description. There was some excitement as we meet each other, and some anticipation for the upcoming project. We also set up expectations of how we want to approach this project through creating the team charter and we felt very confidence about it as a group.
Week 3: First meeting with Kathy
After meeting with our community partner Kathy, we realized that knowledge is not just taught in class, but could also be gained through approaching and communicating with people relevant to your area of study. In this week we have gained skills in terms of communicating with community partner and clarifying expectations through communicating in e-mail and phone calls. Kathy’s briefing and presentation allowed us to recognize the connection between concepts taught in lectures and real life projects. We became more aware of what we will be doing. We wanted to make a contribution towards solving the big puzzle of food security in Vancouver. We had many ideas when it came to improving the VFAM and our emotions ran high as we were excited to start the project.
Week 5: Proposal submission, mark and feedback
When we received our mark and feedback for the proposal, our emotions reached the lowest point in the project progress because we thought we knew what we were doing since the goals and details were discussed during the first meeting with our community partner.
A lack of teamwork and communication led to confusion and frustration in the writing of the proposal. Workload division was not ideal and the end product lacked cohesion. The proposal was bureaucratic and acted as an obstacle that stopped us from making actual progress towards the project. We had to state the obvious, repeating our agreements with Kathy, the project expectations, and our goals on paper. This small failure questioned our confidence on the project and teamwork. While the proposal felt like a nuisance, it did help us understand our task. As described in a podcast, failure assists our way to success since it reduces our confidence at the first stage of the project and increases participation and cooperation among team members (Cohn, 2014). We were glad that some questions that emerged from the proposal were realized and later submitted to Kathy for clarification and solutions, and teamwork later on were much more enhanced.
Week 6: Working together
The unpleasant experience in writing the proposal from the previous week had urged us to improve communication among the members and work closer together as a group. During week 6 we met up and worked together on the 2nd blog post. Meeting and working in the same physical space allowed face to face communication which helped us to better understand each other’s intentions, styles and expectations. This understanding proved to be crucial in producing quality group work as our 2nd blog received great grades. The successful and smooth completion of blog post task as a group increased morale and resulted in emotions to take flight away from the low that resulted from the proposal.
Week 7: Blog post mark
After blog post 2, we felt more aligned as a team as we got an exceptional mark so we gained more confidence as a group. After the hardships we faced regarding teamwork, the positive feedback was extra rewarding and motivated us to work harder together. Learning from the mistakes we have made in blog post 1 and project proposal, we gained the skill of how to communicate effectively within our group. This further showed us how working together and having each member to contribute in group assignments make such a big difference in delivering quality results. Also, week 7 was when our group started to collect and update the information about convenience stores on the VFAM. We were pleased to see progress was being made on the map through putting our planned strategies into action.
Week 8: Conference call with Kathy
Through the conference call we gained further knowledge on what work we were expected to produce and had better clarification for the upcoming goals. Our conversation on the feedback session which is aimed at relevant community partners and VFAM users also highlighted the importance of community participation and contribution in this project. During the call, we reported our updates, findings and questions regarding to the VFAM. This allowed our members to gain facilitation and leadership skills as we were given the role of leading the meeting and bringing up important questions, as well as summarizing our progress. Kathy approved our work, answered questions and provided resources that we can use as guidelines for the remaining project.
Kathy mentioned that she recently held a media launch for the VFAM and within a week, the views on the map increased from 14,000 to 45,000. Upon hearing the good news, we were even more excited and motivated to contribute to this project. We have also discussed about the feedback session, which is aimed to collect the user’s comments about the map. The importance of planning and several stages of feedback and investigations is proved by Thomas and his research team as it leads to a successful project (2014). We are excited to be attending the session and to collect opinions and feedback from the general public. Furthermore, we are going to be showing some staff how to use the map properly and effectively during the feedback session next week. We are hoping to improve the map regarding to people’s feedback and make it more user friendly.
Strategies for a Successful Dismount
The final stages of our community project is coming closer as we only have one month left. We hope to see the graph continue to grow upwards for the remaining 4 weeks. In order to see to this we have summarized the strategies we have planned in order to deliver a successful, quality project and end with an overall enriching experience with the community project. Our strategies are outlined below.
- Continue contacting Kathy to report project process, collect feedback from next week’s session with VCH public health, and seek improvement
- Refer to the list of convenience stores provided by the City of Vancouver and add new convenience stores onto the VFAM
- Communicate within the group and with Kathy regarding which stores have been added and updated
- Note down which stores’ information has been outdated and let Kathy know
- Discuss the details of the project within the group and decide on ways we can create the poster project
- Prepare for and practice the poster project presentation
References
Cohn, G. (2014). Failure is your friend: A new Freakonomics Radio Podcast. Podcast retrieved from http://freakonomics.com/podcast/failure-is-your-friend-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/
Thomas, E., Rosewell, J., Kear, K., & Donelan, H. (2014). Learning and peer feedback in shared online spaces.
Shulman, L.S. (2005). Pedagogies of uncertainty. Liberal Education, 91(2), 18-25. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ697350.pdf