From a fruity harvest of surveys and a full basket of hatched data, the team is ready to inspect, package and transport what we have learned throughout this project and the course to prepare for the presentation day.
Inches Away from the Big Day
Weekly Objectives and Achievement
| Weekly Objectives |
Achievement |
| Week 8
Graphing our knowledge, skill and emotion Last community meeting with Artisan Farmers’ Market |
Plotting our knowledge, skill and emotion process on paper allowed the group to identify how we thought of the project and our own growth.
Discussed amongst the team what our motivation and encouragement factors were and how as a team, we can complete the project on a high note. The last meeting focused on looking at the data and correlation suggestions. |
| Week 9
Compile data
Third blog post |
Data was cleaned: outliers were identified and excluded.
We achieved our goal of 100 surveys. The online survey posted on the Artisan Farmers’ Market’s Facebook page gave us 35 responses. In-person surveys: collected were 93 Complete third blog post Discussed our strategies to complete the project with good relations with the community partner and as a team |
| Week 10 | |
| Week 11 | |
| Week 12
Final Presentation |
Moment of Significant Change
During our last tutorial session we were asked to work individually, and as a group, to set-up graphs that represented the feelings and emotions, we had experienced since the beginning of the course, and those we expected in the future. The graph consisted of an x-axis, representing the time in weeks, and a y-axis, which represented the different emotions we were experiencing; the emotions were happy, sad and neutral. Once our graphing was complete, it was very interesting to see how each member’s experience differed.
Member reactions about the graphs:
“At the beginning of the semester I was nervous and anxious for our community project. I was afraid that I would not have the skills required for to take forward the community project. However, as the weeks passed I began getting comfortable with collecting data, contacting our community partner and discussing with my group members. I learnt some valuable skills that I will definitely use in the future.” – Nikki
“I experienced an increase in knowledge throughout the semester as I developed skills which I did not previously have such as surveying, data analysis, and working with a community partner. I have also learned the importance of community food security and community-based projects.” – Mahbanou
“I chose this project for the similarity of the commerce projects I have completed. I didn’t necessarily feel a large growth in business skills and knowledge but I definitely enjoyed exercising my proposal writing and communication opportunities. I learned quite a bit about farmers’ markets and the importance of customer preferences and habits for a farmers’ market’s operation.” – Brenda
“As the semester progressed, my skills gradually increased, as I improved my skills in group work and surveying. Starting the project, there was much uncertainty in terms of how to begin the project, but as the semester progressed, I began to adapt to the uncertainty. Between weeks 4 and 6, my knowledge of survey development and analysis significantly improved, because of feedback from our second meeting with Tara.” – Jacky
“When I first heard that I had been assigned the Artisans Farmers’ Market project I was concerned as I had very little previous knowledge of the market. I was also unsure I possessed the skills necessary to ensure the completion of our goal. However, with the help of my teammates and our community partner, my knowledge and skills have improved significantly throughout the term, and I am now confident in my skills to survey, analyze data, and work in a professional setting.”
-Pilar
We attributed this variation to our different schedules and exam periods, hence, in some weeks some of us were more stressed and anxious for our exams, while others were more relaxed and vice versa. Some of the weeks showed consistencies across all group members. For example, there were weeks where we had received little feedback from Tara, our Community Partner and the Artisan Farmers’ manager, and felt frustrated. However, the whole group was feeling much better when feedback and positive comments were provided, and we could move forward.
During our last tutorial session we also had the chance to graph the knowledge we had gained so far from our experiences inside and outside class time; this time we found our graphs to be quite similar in terms of knowledge and skills gained, with the group as a whole agreeing that as time went by, more knowledge was gained. This was a result of attending more lectures, tutorials and meetings with Tara. Similarly, the skills gained graph showed an increase in skills as time went forward.
We have decided to continue the trend of upward growth for both knowledge and skills and to try and finish off the term with a more positive approach and attitude towards the hardships we may experience. In order to represent the future on our graphs, we have included weeks beyond our LFS 350 tutorials as well as arrows to represent the continuous lines. We hope to work as a team to get through these last few weeks successfully and finish the semester with a smile.
Our graphs are provided below, check them out!
Figure #1: Each member’s individual skill development progress throughout the weekly objectives of the community project.
Figure #2: Emotions experienced by each member throughout the weekly objectives of the community project.
Figure #3: Each member’s knowledge growth throughout the weekly objectives of the community project.
X-axis Legend
Time (weeks):
- First general meeting with team members
- Second meeting for communication, criteria, and blog post
- Meeting with Tara
- First blog post
- Second meeting with Tara
- Surveying at various locations
- Second blog post
- Last meeting with Tara
-> the arrows refer to each team member’s emotion, skill and knowledge after the completion of the course and how we predict our own abilities to transfer what we learned to our studies or career path development.
Our Strategy For a Graceful Dismount
As the semester comes to an end, we must begin to develop a plan for completing our infographic, as well as our final community project report. We hope for both assignments to be used by the Artisan Farmers’ Market in order to better understand their customer base, how to appeal to potential consumers, and ultimately, help the Market develop a customer loyalty program.
Our strategy for a successful project completion….
Within the next week, our team will be attending a workshop that will guide us in creating an infographic for our project. Our infographic will convey the problem/issue we are trying to solve, why it matters, the approaches we used, our results, and our final take-home message gathered from our research. The process of producing this visual summary of our project will involve analyzing our survey data, which may prove to be a challenge. Specifically, determining how we can use our results to develop a customer profile for the Artisan Farmers’ Market. We will be performing the data analysis as a team following the workshop, and then deciphering the best way to represent it visually. The ultimate goal for this week is to develop an infographic that will disseminate our key-findings and their implications to a diverse audience, in a format that can be easily and quickly understood. On March 26th, we will present our infographic to the public, faculty members, and community partners in the AMS Student Nest.
The findings of our research are to be presented in a final community project report that will be used by the Artisan Farmers’ Market (North and West Vancouver) to tailor their new customer loyalty program. The final report will also be distributed to 145 markets via the BC Association of Farmers’ Markets. Our final report will consist of an analysis of our survey data, which will involve identifying geographic, psychographic, and demographic characteristics of current customers, as well as, potential customers. Once we’ve identified these characteristics, we will use the information to develop customer profiles for marketing and the customer loyalty program. Our goal is to write a report that displays the path that we took to develop customer profiles, so that future students or managers can learn from our process and develop customer profiles of their own. We hope that our report will be useful for Tara, and the Artisan Farmers’ Market, today and in the future.
In order to complete our final report in a timely manner, we will begin by assigning a specific section of the report to each team member. This division of the workload will be discussed and solidified on Monday, March 12th. We will then set up a timeline for when each section should be complete, as it is important that some parts of the report are written before others. This timeline will also include “editing days” where we will look over the work we have completed so far, and provide suggestions to our team members. Throughout the process of writing our final report, we will make sure to incorporate the feedback given to us by Tara, our community partner and Wilson, our TA. We hope that by complying with our schedule our report will be of higher quality, and of more use to our community partner.
The upcoming weeks will certainly prove to be a challenge, especially, with due dates and finals approaching. But, it is important to remember that, “Without a certain amount of anxiety and risk, there’s a limit to how much learning occurs.”, therefore, we will take this time of anxiety and uncertainty to further our learning (Shulman, 2005, p. 18).
References
Shulman, L. S. (2005). Pedagogies of uncertainty. Liberal Education, 91(2), 18-25.