This weeks blog post is co- authored with Abby Robenalt and Andrea Emma. We will be talking about our progress so far on our collaborative research project!
We have changed our project to a persuasive project and changed our way to present our information. We figured we would be able to persuade our audience by writing a formal paper using various multimedia concepts. There have been a few very disturbing videos we have found that prove our point greatly. We have also decided to create a separate weebly to work collaboratively. We broke our paper down into sections to each work on our own to then collaborate together. We are really excited to work on our project because we are all avid dog lovers. We cant wait for you all to see our final project!
This week’s blog post will be about our group’s collaboration and our duties. My group members and I (Abby & Andrea) will be co-authoring this blog post. Enjoy!
Our group’s strategy for our project is to use a mix of both collaborations:
hierarchical and dialogic. All three of us are researching on our own to piece
everything together. We also have decided to interview peers on the types of dog food they are feeding their own dog and why. We have scheduled to interview a local vet and PetsMart employees. A portion of our project will be done dialogically also. We will all be working together to find information and discuss with each other. We are all excited to begin our project and start working together!
This week in class, we picked group members and began talking about our collaborative projects. My group members are Andrea Emma and Allyson Robenalt and we will be writing this blog together. We will be talking about our plans for our project!
Choosing a topic for our collaborative research project was very easy for us, all being animal lovers, especially dogs! We chose the topic of what ingredients are in the food that we are feeding our animals. All being pet lovers, and Andrea working at Pets Smart this is project that will really be important to all of us. After watching Food Inc. in class and see what was placed in our foods we thought to our self’s we can only imagine what is place in our pets food. We are all curious as to what is good for our dogs to eat and what isn’t. There are many pet foods out there that all filled with fillers and ingredients that are not good for our animals at all. After all talking, we realized we all feed our dogs different brands of dog food. For our project we plan on interviewing various people in Pets Mart that are buying pet food. We also want to interview a local vet to see what he/she has to say about the food we are feeding our animals. We are also going to look on Pet food websites to see testimonials from buyers and if there are any informational videos on specific brand dog foods.
The questions we would like to find out are: Is this harming our pet? Is my pet getting their full nutritional value from their food? What are the long term affects it has on our animals? Our audience for our project will be pet owners and it will be an informative piece. We want to find answers to our questions to be able to inform pet owners of what their animals are really eating.
For this blog post, I read the article “Turns of Thought” by Donna Qualley. I had to answer the following question, what is your understanding of being a reflective and reflexive researcher?
Looking back at your own work and analyzing is the way to learn and understand something.
Reflection is the process of looking at your work and reflecting on how you feel about it. When reflecting on our work, we are thinking about how we feel about the piece. Reflection is very important because being able to look back at your work and seeing that changes may need to be made and how to make it better.
Being a reflexive researcher means you are able to go back and think about what others have told you, thinking outside of the box. Qualley talks about the differences of being a reflective and reflexive learner. Reflective researchers spend a large amount of time thinking about their assignment. Reflexive researchers spend time thinking about what others have said.
This week we had to read “Collaborative Writing in Composition Studies,” by Sheryl Fontaine and Susan M. Hunter. We had to answer the following questions, what are the different types of collaboration? What types of collaboration have you done before (for school, work, etc?)
I learned that there were many different types of collaboration. They talked about many types of collaboration that include dialogic, scaffolding, and hierarchical. Scaffolding is where two people come together to create one larger project. Both partners need to work together at all times and share all their thoughts and ideas. This is a very important type of collaboration. I remember one semester having to present a project on ADHD and working with a partner. We had to plan and work together to finish our final piece.
Dialogic collaboration is a little different, but still has similar features. This is where the group can individually work on parts and a discussion for other parts. There is a lot of discussion between partners in this type of collaboration. I have worked with this type of collaboration in one of my classes this semester. We have been working on a few projects with starting them in class, discussing with each other and then working individually at home. I don’t always enjoy this type of work because it can get confusing sometimes.
Hierarchical collaboration is the type of collaboration I am most comfortable with. A project is assigned, and a leader is assigned and then each member picks a different role. This is the type of collaboration most people see and use today. I use hierarchical collaboration I use at work and school on a daily basis. In school there are more times than not that I can remember grouping up and each choosing a role.
In school and work I use the different types of collaboration on a daily basis. I enjoy hierarchical collaboration the most, simply because I think this is what I am most comfortable with. This type I see used all the time in my college classes and even at work. My co-teacher and I each plan lessons and then come together to create our master lesson plan.
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