Ria's Rambles

This might not be daily news, but you should definitely read all about it!

Most educators favor modernized teaching approaches at the advantage of students.  You probably think this is a dumb statement because it is common knowledge.

BUT, many of these same educators neglect to recognize the students who are perfectly capable of conducting their own research because they have prior experiences.  When educators underestimate students capabilities, it causes their teachings approaches to be very ineffective.

Because many educators often overlook students’ research capabilities, I decided to create an influential guide to effectively approach students.  I digitally designed an infographic composition to be used as a handout, or even incorporated in to a pamphlet to be distributed to educators at teaching conferences or meetings.

Here is an image of what it looks like…

At the top of my infographic composition, I included the title, Modern Learning Approaches, and a digital drawing of SCU’s library.  The background of these items is a navy blue and is arrow-like shape towards the bottom to guide the audience to what to me are the aspects of modern learning approaches that are effective. Then, to concisely present an helpful guide to approaching students, I created five key steps.  The background of each step is orange; however, to make each step even more distinguishable from the other, I alternated every other step with a more salmon-like orange.  Oh, and I gave a description of every step with a corresponding icon.

By constructing an infographic composition, I found it very easy to present the content of my argument to the audience.  I also thought creating this to be very enjoyable because I am creative and find pleasure in designing various items… honestly, I am a perfectionist when it comes to designing things, so it is probably unhealthy that I enjoy crafty things.

Like I made the what should be the easiest aspect of the assignment difficult because it was challenging for me to find symmetrical icons that properly represented my steps and their descriptions.  Overall, I consider this composition as an effective and positive representation of my ideas.

Although it might seem like you just met a girl named Maria,  this course has been a lot longer than you thought.

The past ten weeks of spring quarter have been without a doubt a powerful learning experience.  I developed as a college student as well as learned new skills on not only how to research, but most importantly how to become a better writer.  I learned a various amount of styles on how to construct these writings. From archives to surveys to annotated bibliographies to argumentative to a media project.

Looking back on this now, the BEAM method to frame work my writing was extremely beneficial and important.  As a refresher, BEAM stands for, backgrounds, exhibits, arguments, and methods.

B…

Backgrounds or background sources are materials whose claims a writer accepts as facts. The author then uses these found fast as “common knowledge,” which can later be used in arguments.

E…

Exhibits or exhibit sources are materials a writer offers for explications, analysis, or interpretation.  Therefore, exhibits are commonly referred as one’s “evidence” or “examples,” which add to a writers conversation.

A…

Arguments or argument sources are materials whose claims a writer affirms, disputes, refines, or extends in some way.  One would naturally say that arguments are just “conversations,” and can even just be commonly held views.

M…

Methods or method sources are materials from which a writer derives a governing concept or manner of working. In other words, methods are simply just influential concepts that may enter into the general language of disciplines or professions, which allows them to lose their ties to specific sources.

BEAM is the framework for readings, being that strong writing depends on strong critical reading skills. The framework for critical reading also made it useful to framework my writing.  Some of my best academic papers were written this quarter by analyzing specific exhibits in order to further conversations embodied in specific constellations of argument sources.  In my opinion, I think BEAM allowed me to successfully accomplish  strong academic papers.

But this is all I have for now for you…

So long,

Farewell,

This is Maria signing off.

College is not the first time students are assigned a research paper. Any time something is being taught, there is a particular language or terminology that accompanies the subject matter.  I have learned that some people suggest that students lack research skills and need more assistance from teacher. These people argue that obtaining proper research skills is recognized by ones understanding of literacy terms in relation to researching.

While I agree it is an issue that students do not know basic researching terms, I do not believe that it determines whether one can properly research or not. I don’t think educators should simply ensure students have the means and capabilities to research, rather than criticizing student’s research by calling it improper because it is not identical to the methods they would have used.

Personally, I think that if college aged students have much bigger problems than researching skills if they cannot figure out the meaning of a word.  People should be more focused on addressing students’ laziness and inability to ask for help.  It is pretty ridiculous if they cannot see how it is easy enough for students to raise their hand, and ask a teacher to remind them what the meaning is of the word(s) being used.  Also, students can simply ask a classmate or even search a dictionary, textbook, or the Internet to discover what the term means. Like cmon now, its not that hard to put a little work and effort in…

Are you ready kids?

          Aye aye captain.

I can’t hear you!

          AYE AYE CAPTAIN

Oohhhhh…

I am sorry if this crushes your dream, but we are not really going on a physical adventure. BUT we are going to be talking about my adventures of researching again.  As much as I hate to annoy you with this again, I think I just have a few bones to pick with some so called “experts” on the topic of learning approaches.

Some educators believe the undergraduate students do not value archival materials nearly enough to realize the positive effect it will have on their research.  For example, in the article, “Introducing Undergraduate Students to Archives and Special Cases,” Greg claims that “undergraduate students seldom utilize primary source materials located in departments of archives and special collections, primarily due to lack of understanding of what an archive has to offer and how it is used.”

So in other words, he is basically saying students don’t know what to do with archives because they are just a bunch of crybabies.  And honestly, I think he is a drama queen because he is seriously over exaggerating to claim: the students do not use archival sources because they do not know anything.  So, I assume that he believes students, as a whole, are incapable of archival research.

(@Greg)

But you know what, he is WRONG.  He is literally neglecting to consider that some students do have the skills necessary for archival research, yet they might choose not to utilize archives…not many research projects are going to require or need archival information.

As you already know, I was introduced to archives for the sole purpose of completing an archival research paper; or at least that was my initial assumption.  Because archival research is a form of research that is uncommon as it provides information about a specific place, institution, or group of people, educators should tailor their instructions so that all students will benefit rather than just assuming students are incompetent regarding archival research skills.

When I learned about Santa Clara University’s archives, I was given background information as to what an archive is and how to go about my research.  This was helpful as my classmates and I were not completely clueless when we physically entered SCU’s archive.  Even though I had never been in an archive before, I wasn’t a crybaby and let my uncertainties negatively affect my experience.

So not to be cocky, but for all y’all who are confident in your knowledge yet do not stand up for yourselves…

It is rather hard to form an argument for some. Personally, I am one of these people.

As you can tell from reading a vast majority of my other blogs, I am amidst a research project.  I truly feel like I have grown tremendously throughout the process, but I am no where near done.

From the beginning, I was focused on finding out more information about my school, Santa Clara University, because I knew absolutely nothing about what happened in the past.  Then, to make sure I wasn’t the only one here that was absolutely blinding by the great historical significance our campus holds, I decided to survey those around me.  I found that some knew basic information, and others knew nothing.

When asked the question, What can you tell my out SCU in the past, I was given a variety of answers.  My favorite response from a per was “nothing because I don’t care,” it was awesome!

(seriously though)

Seriously, it was!  It might not seem like it is, but this was the exact type of answer I was looking for because of how honest and #real this student was because I get it. Trust me, I really do. I get bored as heck too.

Moving on to the core of my project, I researched educators learning approaches and  thoughts on students researching. I found that a majority of educators argue that students don’t know how to research and need to be guided.  And from a surface level perspective, so did I.

Then I really began to think about al the information I gathered to try to form my argument… and it was HARD.  I had nothing to really say to argue the topic.  However, then I realized something so small, yet extremely important that had not been discussed in these authors conversations.

They forgot to mention those who are more than capable… which lead me to an easy fight against the educators who underestimate the competent students.

Main Research Findings

From long days and nights traveling the world, digging up fossils, and… just kidding I am not digging for dinosaurs. But from researching over a  long period of time, I came to the conclusion that educators who solely focus on students are less capable are not efficiently teaching students because it sparks students to rely on educators. But why is that you ask? Well, it is actually rather simple… educators underestimate students capabilities.

(I wish I was)

Crazy, huh?

I remind them that many students are capable of successfully accessing research information, and I admire those whose arguments align with my own.  By practicing more modernized learning approaches, educators will find it easier to be able to recognize students’ capabilities.  This is not only beneficial for education today, but also for the future.  Even though these methods and realizations are not perfect nor guaranteed to be useful in the future, it is still essential to address, as education will be around forever.

Who really needs to hear it?

Educators…

What are the most effective modes of reaching that audience?

There are plenty of effective modes to reach educators. Personally, I am going to be creating an info graph for them using Canva, so hopefully it works out!

What kinds of messages do they respond?

Hopefully mine 🙂

For class today, we met in the library as the librarian guided us through activities using tinyurl.com websites.  The name tinyurl is pretty deceiving if you ask me.  Yes the url itself is tiny, but I would kinda just assume the website (articles) it takes me too would be tiny too… and that is not the case.

Anyways, this library session was very helpful for my research project in two very different perspectives.

Perpective #1

From the activities we engaged in learned the difference between a periodical title and an article title, and how to locate them both.  When I was exposed to the articles, I practiced “sizing up” on a particular article and periodical in order to determine the articles of most value and importance to my research fairly quickly.  Then, I learned how to write/construct a succinct, yet insightful one sentence description the article.  This one sentence contained the following three elements:

1. Brief description of the article itself
2. Brief description of the credentials/background of the authors
3. Brief description of the type of periodical

After learning the elements the sentence should contain, I practiced physically writing my own one sentence descriptions, which we then reviewed as a class afterwards to ensure we were doing them correctly.

Perspective #2

By having what I just described in perspective #1 happen, it directly correlated with a lot of the sources I have found.  Many of my sources discuss the fact that many students do not have research skills, and if they do, that they don’t know how to properly utilize them.  The methods the authors often refer back to is that it is imperative for archivists, librarians, and teachers to properly instruct students how to research so they will be successful in the future.  Therefore, by the librarian teaching my classmates and I how to locate sources and formulate them when writing, she is following exactly what the authors of my sources are preaching!

We all know the young girl with short dark hair, pink shirt, orange shorts, and a purple backpack who explores with her partner in crime,Boots, as Dora the Explorer.  And I think that I am pretty similar to her in various ways as I am exploring my sources.  Two major components I do my best to locate in all my sources are:

1. Territory
2. Gap
   

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Territory

The territory of the source is the context that the author establishes for his or her research, providing necessary background on the topic.  I locate the author’s territory by locating the central claim, topic generalizations, and references of previous items of research made by the author.

An example of locating the territory is in a scholarly article that performs a study  that analyzes undergraduates understanding of fourteen commonly used information-literacy terms: citation, bibliography, keyword, full text, abstract, database, peer review, journal, catalog, open access, subject heading, scholarly, source, and stacks. The results of the study revealed that some of the terms least understood by students are those most frequently found in faculty-created research assignments, syllabi, and used during library instructions. Therefore, I can conclude that the territory is that some of the students who do not understand the terms being used when they are being taught how to use/find sources have great difficulty when they actually have to find the sources on their own.

GAP

On the other hand, the gap of the source refers to the aspect of an article that the article that the author fails to address all the existing issues sufficiently.  Typically, I indicate the gap of information after I read the information presented, and still have questions or am left wondering about specific piece of information.

An example of locating a gap in the same article that I found the territory in is, what about the students who do understand the literacy terms presented to them? Do they still have issues when researching? If they do, why is that?

“Locate and read one article of relevance to your project”

This was in the instructions I received as one of my homework assignments.  I thought, Oh this will be easy, no biggie!

However, when I actually attempted to find an article that would be useful for me to use, I realized it is a lot harder than it seems to find useful information.

My on-going, main topic that links the focuses of all my research project arguments is student’s knowledge on the historical significances. My first research project was motivated by the fact that I felt as though I am not very educated on SCU’s history, so I wanted to find out more about it.  This brought me to wonder if students in general (not just me) are unaware/aware of the significance and history of SCU, which is what I structured my second research assignment around.  This last assignment led me to my current research project, which I am hoping to learn if SCU professors and archivists believe students are educated/uneducated and how they try to educate and interest students (if they do).

Like the other students in my class I am sure did (and actually any students in general), I immediately opened up my Web browser, clicked Google, and began typing in my topic into the search engine.

This is when I realized it was difficult to locate articles, as i found nothing pertaining to SCU professors or archivists.  So because it was late and I was getting lazy and tired, I selected an article, “The Problem With History Classes,” from The Atlantic.  I knew this was not going to be that useful, but I decided it would be better than nothing.

After watching the tutorial, I realized I should not rely on Google, and I should use the search engines through the SCU library. Not only did I realize that, but also that I needed to be more specific with the topic I was searching.  So rather than trying to find articles on SCU professors and archivists, I searched for “undergraduate students* archives” and browsed for articles that would be beneficial to me.  By doing this, I think I will be much more successful moving forward.

Because I learned that there was so much about SCU that I did not know about through archival research, I began to wonder how many current students also lack this knowledge.  This lead me to study the actual knowledge of current SCU’ students by designing and conducting a survey of my own in hope to find out what students think about the topic of the historical significance of SCU.

From instructions from my professor, I attempted to create the most effective and unbiased survey as possible using Google Forms.  I started my survey with easy, demographical questions.  Then, as my survey progressed the complexity of the questions progressed as well, and the most controversial question I placed as my last question.  Here is a link to my survey if you want to check it out: CTW Survey – SCU History 

From my survey, I created some data tables and graphs to better display my information.  I gathered 44 responses (9 males and 35 females) of different grade levels – 26 first-years, 3 sophomores, 12 juniors, and 3 seniors.  Even though age and gender do not really influence my survey, it is nice to know that there is variety in those who responded to my survey.

Generally speaking, my survey results show that most respondents believe that students at SCU are not educated on the history in relation to the significance of this school.

(jk)

The first table I created shows how many people feel as though they personally are educated on the history of SCU.  28 of the forty-four respondents said that the do not feel educated on the history of SCU.  9 people said that they do believe they are educated on the history of SCU, and 7 people said they are not sure if they are educated or not on the history of SCU.  After analyzing these results, I am not sure how effective my answer choice of unsure is to my data. If the student is truly unsure then the answer is valid; however, I feel as though if the student is unsure if they are aware of the significance and history of SCU, then he or she probably just does not actually know.

Table 1: Do you feel as though you are educated on the history of SCU?

Graph 1 shows how educated respondents believe SCU students are on the significance of SCU today in relation to its history.  Oddly enough, this graph corresponds to the answers found in Table 1 because most respondents also tend to believe that students are also unaware of the history and significance of SCU.  9 of the 43 respondents (yes I am aware its out of 43 instead of 44 because someone decided not to reply…smh) replied students are uneducated, nineteen replied students are somewhat uneducated, thirteen replied that students are neither uneducated, nor educated, two people replied that students are somewhat educated, and lastly, not a single person replied that students are very educated on the significance of SCU today in relation to its history, which I found extremely interesting being that nine respondents claim to be educated.

Graph 1: How educated do you think the students at this school are on the significance of SCU today in relation to its history?

Although, the results show that a majority of the respondents believe students are uneducated, the data makes me to wonder what the guidelines are that make one student more educated than the other when trying to judge whether or not he or she is educated on SCU’s historical significance.  The fact that 9 people responded yes and 7 people responded unsure in Table 1, and only 2 people responded that students are educated and 13 people responded neither uneducated, nor educated also really causes me to question what makes one more educated in SCU’s history over his or her peers. However, overall the SCU students that took my survey are aware of very basic aspects of SCU’s history.  Chart 1 represents the percentage of respondents that know when SCU was founded, while Table 2 shows the amount of people who are aware that SCU was once Mission Santa Clara.

Chart 1: When was SCU founded?

Table 2: Are you aware that SCU was once Mission Santa Clara?

Chart 1 portrays that 73.8% of respondents are aware that SCU was founded in 1851, and that 26.2% of respondents did not know that SCU was founded in 1851.  Also, Table 2 shows that 40 of the 44 respondents are aware that SCU was once Mission Santa Clara, and that only 4 people were unaware of this information.  Collectively from all my data findings, I think it would be interesting to find out what students believe constitutes themselves and others as educated on the history and significance of SCU.

Lastly, the component of my survey that I found to be invaluable was one, and only one, response from the short-answer question: What can you tell me about SCU in the past? The response was not one that shared some extraordinary historical significance of SCU, but rather the opposite, as the respondent’s answer was, “Not much because I don’t really care.”

YES

This respondent gave me the most genuine and authentic reply.  Instead of simply telling me what I wanted to hear, she told me what I needed to hear.  This response reminded me of my initial motivation to research this topic, as I felt as though I am very uneducated on SCU’s history and significance, which lead me to be inclined to find out if I am not alone and students in general at SCU are unaware (or aware) of the historical significance as well.

Now, I am inspired to further my research to a new group of people in the SCU community because as the student replied with “Not much because I don’t really care,” I began to wonder if “superiors” (SCU historians and archivist) believe the students here are educated or uneducated, if they think they are uneducated, and how they attempt to educate students (if they do).