Strategies For A Graceful Dismount
As you all know from our previous post, we had a crazy couple of weeks trying to figure out the recipe book and setting up a time to meet with our community partners, Robin and Ryan. We have been continuing to develop our recipe book and keep in contact with our partners as our journey slowly comes to an end. There is still a lot to be done before we reach our final destination and as things are finally coming into place our weekly objectives are changing. Below we outline what our previous objectives had been and some additional ones that have been added as the weeks go on.
Week 8: October 22-28
Previous Objective:
- Learn how to display collected data in a clear and effective way
Additional Objectives:
- Continue to add to our recipe draft and send draft to our community partner
Achievements:
We have made good progress with finalizing which recipes will be in the cookbook. On October 23 we had sent out our first draft of our recipes to our community partner. Within a couple days we received feedback on how we should display the recipes. This helped fulfill our objective of learning how to display collected data in a clear and effective way.
Week 9: October 29-November 4
Previous Objective:
- Understand what is required to complete a strong, well done, final project
Additional Objectives:
- Continue to edit the recipes using the feedback received from our community partner
Achievements:
So far this week we have managed to fully understand what is expected in our recipe draft from discussion with our community partner. We used the feedback we received to edit the draft and on November 1, we sent another copy over to Robin, Ryan, and Angel for more feedback. We are continuing to refer back to our initial goals to keep them in mind as we edit. Over the next couple of weeks we hope to hear more feedback from our community partner as our project slowly comes together!
| Project Progress | Due Dates |
| Send rough draft of recipes to our community partner | October 23 |
| Edit recipes and resend draft | November 1 |
| Edit once again and send final draft | November 15 |
| Final editing and completion of project | November 30 |
This table briefly outlines our upcoming due dates for our project to keep us on track
Moment of Significant Change
Through drawing out our emotion v.s skills graphs, we realized how similar we were feeling throughout different stages. In the last 8 weeks, we have done a lot of group works and assignments together. Overall, we had a fun time working together and tackling all the difficulties form our project especially when we just started our project. We were really excited to meet each other and to communicate with our project partner who was helpful and gave us a lot suggestions on how to start our project. However, things became tougher when we came across our first two blogs and proposal. We were repeatedly asked to resubmit our work, and even though we edited them several times, we still did not get a satisfactory grade, which was really frustrating. We thought it was the lack of skills and experience of writing blogs and proposals that led to our unexpected results. However, as we continue to go through this process we are learning what is needed of us and how to improve. The other thing that did not go well was planning our school visit, which should have been set up a few weeks ago before we started our first recipe draft. The emotion graph reflects more about our confidence level. When we first started our project, we were excited and confident in what we were going to do. However, the curve declined significantly when we got our feedback for the first blog, reflecting a decline in our confidence. Interestingly, our confidence was boosted when we uploaded the second blog. There is an increasing trend after we finished our project draft as we understand more and get more familiar with our project.
As shown in the skills and knowledge graph, there was a common pattern of increased growth. Surprisingly, some of us learnt a lot from getting feed back, while some of us got confused and unsure when things didn’t go our way. As we came closer to the due day of our project draft, we gained greater understanding, realized what we could have done better before, and recognize what we can do to improve our project in the future.
Our strategies for successful project completion are as following:
- To communicate efficiently within our group to keep everyone updated regarding of the project process.
- To continuously keep contact with our community partners asking for feedback.
- To set regular group meetings working on editing our recipe book.
- To make the most of our flexible learning time checking in with all of our group members and ensuring everyone is on the same track.
- To compare our recipe book with previous one trying to find the strengths and limitations of our recipe book.
- To monitor and assimilate all information into one document rather than have to amalgamate all the information to assure coherence among the project.
- To set deadlines ahead of time to limit stress as final exams approach, starting to prepare for the group presentation, final report and infographic.
- To keep positive attitude and mindset, and rise to the challenge.
- To reflect on the feedback from the community partners and some unsolved challenges of this project and provide suggestions for future collaborators working on this project.