Monthly Archives: June 2017

As the quarter comes to an end and it’s time to close the chapter of my freshman year of college, I’ve had some time to reflect on my research process throughout my Critical Thinking and Writing class over the last ten weeks.

I feel as though my skills as a researcher really improved. My process in conducting and reporting research was enriched with all of the sources we studied in class such as BEAM writing, the 6 C’s, and learning to enter an ongoing conversation by making an argument and including my own personal views in my writing.

BEAM allowed me provide my readers with background, exhibits, arguments, and methods. In using this outline for the research process, I was able to achieve a critically strong understanding of the subject of interest, and convey my research in a way that was thorough and clear to my audience.

As a recap, the 6 C’s are:

• Content: What is the main idea? For documents, list important, points/phrases/words/sentences. For images, describe what you see.
• Citation: Who created this and when? What type of source is it?
• Communication: What is the author’s bias or point of view? Who is the intended audience? Why was the source created? What is the tone of the document or image?
• Context: What is going on in the world, country, region or locality when this was created? What other sources might help provide answers to this question? What else do we need to know to better understand the evidence in this source?
• Connections: How does this connect to what you already know? To what other academic or popular conversations does it connect?
• Conclusions: What contributions does this make to our understanding of research, student life at SCU, or a topic of relevance to your fellow students? How does this text (and/or your experience locating it, reading it, and making sense of it) relate to our class readings? How did you come to these conclusion?

This was also another outline that helped my organize my research and arguments, and provided me with a checklist when revising my drafts.

I think this quarter really helped me find my voice when writing. I have always been taught to never use “I” in an essay, nor include personal views of any sort. I felt the most confident I have ever felt when writing an essay or research paper, and was actually excited to complete each assignment. I will miss this class, but feel as though my writing skills became enriched with new strategies and ways to communicate that I had never learned before, and I am excited to apply what I have learned in other classes.

Signing off for good,

-FH

I finished my infographic! Woot! Here is the final project:

I decided to use an infographic for my composition format because in the science world, posters are made to relay information gathered from research projects that summarize each aspect of the conducted research. I decided that since my project had to be constructed using technology, a poster was not an option, but an infographic was a very close second. In this way, I could use this source to relay my information from my research argument in a similar way as something you would see when walking through the halls of a science department or during a scientific seminar.

My targeted audience was faculty, department heads, and undergraduate students involved in the biological sciences, in addition to those associated with chemistry as my research also involved incorporating a few alterations to undergraduate chemistry curriculum. The format I chose for my infographic was one the that was separated into multiple sections by two alternating colors and differing bolded subheadings that were followed by a short summarized blurb about that specific sub-header. I hoped that viewers would see my infographic and be caught by the bolded word “biology” in addition to the green hues as this is a color that is often associated with science. I also added small clip art images that related to the information I was summarizing in that particular section of my infographic.

The information I included on my visual was what I considered to be the main points of my researched argument. Because my essay was solely based on biology undergraduate reformation, it was very easy to pinpoint which arguments would be the most influential to see on a poster as there was no other aspects to my paper other than proposals of change. However, I found it incredibly difficult to summarize all of the extensive research I had conducted about the main points I made. Because each proposal was so specific and complex, it was hard to simplify the information into a short enough statement that a reader would not be overwhelmed with too many words and become uninterested, but enough that I could be as influential and informative as possible.

I’m very pleased with how my project turned out, and I really enjoyed being given the option to express some artistic creativity, along with the challenge of using a digital format that I was not familiar with initially.

-FH

I am finding this assignment to be much easier than I expected. Maybe this is because it’s fun to have the opportunity to express my creative side, maybe because I get to use a format that is new to me for composing my final project, or maybe because I find this process to be much easier than actually writing a research argument essay (which it is).

In having my argument essay complete, the only thing I have to do is decide which points I made in my essay are the most important, and will be the most persuasive to my audience. My audience for this project is my fellow peers, who may know a little bit about my topic, but not so much as to completely comprehend all of my terminology and reason for why my topic is important. My job is to inform my peers to the greatest extent of why they should care about undergraduate biology reformation, and I can do that by organizing my information into an infographic.

The translation of my information has proven to be quite easy for the most part, but in regard to length, it’s been a little more difficult trying to summarize my points to really drive the point home. I want my audience to see my visual and immediately think oh this is about science! (maybe they won’t be so enthusiastic but you get the point). For this reason, I chose my color scheme to be green with small visuals of science paraphernalia (a visual will come in a later blog post, I promise!). Words that are important and are the main points I want to make are bolded, and information is summarized in a few key words or short phrases. In this way, my audience will not be overwhelmed with mounds of information, and will not become lost in what the main point of my infographic really is.

-FH

The time has come to complete my last Critical Thinking and Writing assignment for the quarter.

Not that I haven’t absolutely loved this class, but I think I can speak for myself in addition to the rest of my peers when I say we’re all ready for this school year to come to an end. The assignment is to transform my research argument paper into a multimodal project. Whether this be a video, audio essay, image, infographic, website, screencast, or any other form of technology available for me to use, I need to get my creative juices flowing.

I’ll take 12 please and thank you

The thought of making a video terrifies me, especially after writing and composing my ninth grade agricultural biology final project (if you want a good laugh and to see me wearing a stick on mustache check this video out). As a science major, I am used to making informational posters laden with information about whatever research I conducted. One problem: this isn’t technological. Now I’m panicking and thinking great, another humiliating video in the near future.

That’s when I looked at Professor Lueck’s posted powerpoint explaining the assignment more in depth. I realized I didn’t know what an infographic was, and I decided to look at the websites that were capable of making these technological designs. To my surprise, I was greeted with templates that looked very similar to what a scientific poster would look like if it were in an online format. I could feel the juices flowing at this point, and realized that this source would be the best one to use for my project as it was very representative of something you would see in the science community.

-FH

As I was drafting my research argument essay, I was finding it incredibly hard to make my own claims. It seems as though after conducting extensive research on the need for reformation of undergraduate biology curriculum, every idea has been thought of, proposed, rejected or implemented. So how am I supposed to make a thesis in which my own original argument is proposed?

This is an issue I have come across in almost all writing tasks I’ve been assigned. I feel as though I am regurgitating others’ ideas or completely lacking in creativity. It is during these times that I feel mediocre in my writing, and wish that I had the talent that so many others do of coming up with unorthodox or insightful ideas. Even in conversation, whether it be debating controversial topics or even just proposing an alternative idea rather than In-n-Out for lunch, this obstacle has always hindered me.

It wasn’t until after I had written the skeleton of my draft (which was only deciding which sources from my annotated bibliography I wanted to use to make sure I covered the most area of my topic) that I realized I had a thesis in my mind all along. More importantly, I realized that since my argument was part of an ongoing conversation amongst experts, scientists, national science organizations, and department heads at institutes of higher education, my thesis did not have to be so cut and dry.

There is room for challenge and acceptance in forming an original argument when entering a current conversation. And so, I could call for the rejection of certain ideas and the acceptance of others, then use my sources to provide examples upon which I could argue in support of or rejection of. In this way, my ideas for why I agree or disagree are original as it is my own personal viewpoint, and my reasoning is formed by not only my research, but also my experience as an undergraduate biology major.

As a result, my paper did not only consist of my own original arguments, but it was strong in its structure as it included background, examples, analysis and coherent, structural flow of my arguments.

-FH