I now have two weeks to complete my final senior thesis paper. What a whirlwind of emotions. I've been working on this project for the greater half of 9 months now, and as much as I hate to see it go, I'm relieved to move on to the next step of my life, being the real world.
I met with Dr. Bisha last week before Easter break started so that I could know if my literature review and method section were at the point of being able to turn in. I did those portions so early because I fully know how intense putting together my data analysis is going to be. I wanted to be able to focus on the analysis portion for the next two weeks and not have to worry about the other sections.
The motivation getting me through these next two weeks is the fact that in less than three weeks, I'll be graduated. I'm in the home stretch right now and I don't plan on slacking now (even though I want to). As I've mentioned in my last journal, I have quite a few things to add in to my data analysis section. When I discovered all of my new data about central and peripheral processing, I had nine days until my presentation, so I had no time to go in to my paper and put in all of the new information. On top of that, I will be answering the questions that were addressed in my Q/A from the English and Communication professors. Among those will include: What will make an effective online training course?; How would I create my own Title IX training?; What would I do about the different group sizes of students?; and, Is age a determining factor of the responses to my survey and the two different training sessions?
Luckily, I do have answers to those questions and the hardest part about adding it all to my paper will be to figure out where exactly to put it all. At this point, I'm thinking that towards the end of my analysis to help bring the whole thing together. I will still be keeping everything that I've already had in the data section, which is good because I'd much rather have things to add than things to take out.
As I go through this editing and adding process of my paper, it will be very tedious, but I'm truly looking forward to end result of this paper since I have been working so hard on it since September.
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Saturday, April 13, 2019
Post-Thesis Presentation and Next Steps: Journal 6
Today, Saturday April 13th, is two days after I've given my Senior Thesis presentation. After 8 long months and a lot of preparing, I finally presented all of my research and data. And I honestly think it went really well. I felt the most prepared for this presentation than I had for any other presentation that I've given in my college career. And that's saying something. I cannot even begin to express the level of happiness that I have now that I've finally presented my work. It is seriously the biggest weight lifted off of my shoulders. But now I get to look forward to all of the edits I need to make for my paper.
I think the most difficult part for me on Thursday was figuring out how to coherently answer the questions that the faculty had for me. I knew my topic and I tried my best to anticipate what the questions would be, but even with that preparation, I still struggled. One of the main things that the professors wanted me to answer was if a facilitator was always necessary and are there some types of online trainings that would work. In my head I believe that I had good answers, but the words were not coming out the way I intended so I obviously need to spend more time thinking those through and adding them to my paper.
Now that I finally have feedback from Dr. Bisha on my initial first draft of my paper, I will be able to go in and actually make all of those changes. And luckily, I have three weeks to do it. The most tedious part about revising my paper is the fact that all of my central and peripheral processing information is not included, since I came up with that idea about a week and a half ago. Not that any of it is hard, but I will need to still add more into my literature review, probably spice up my method section a little bit, and then really make a big difference into my data analysis. I think the way I plan to attack this is to print out copies of each section and then go through with a red marker and fill in the pieces that need to be added and even taken out. Once I go through that for my lit review and data analysis, I will continue to send my updated copies to Dr. Bisha, as well as maybe Dr. Vrooman just to make sure I don't miss any important pieces of information and that it all sounds coherent.
As I go through this process, I will give two more updates on how things are going and different feedback that I'm given from my professors. Hopefully I can knock the majority of this out the week we get back from Easter Break, which is in two weeks. That way I can stop worrying about all of this as soon as possible.
I think the most difficult part for me on Thursday was figuring out how to coherently answer the questions that the faculty had for me. I knew my topic and I tried my best to anticipate what the questions would be, but even with that preparation, I still struggled. One of the main things that the professors wanted me to answer was if a facilitator was always necessary and are there some types of online trainings that would work. In my head I believe that I had good answers, but the words were not coming out the way I intended so I obviously need to spend more time thinking those through and adding them to my paper.
Now that I finally have feedback from Dr. Bisha on my initial first draft of my paper, I will be able to go in and actually make all of those changes. And luckily, I have three weeks to do it. The most tedious part about revising my paper is the fact that all of my central and peripheral processing information is not included, since I came up with that idea about a week and a half ago. Not that any of it is hard, but I will need to still add more into my literature review, probably spice up my method section a little bit, and then really make a big difference into my data analysis. I think the way I plan to attack this is to print out copies of each section and then go through with a red marker and fill in the pieces that need to be added and even taken out. Once I go through that for my lit review and data analysis, I will continue to send my updated copies to Dr. Bisha, as well as maybe Dr. Vrooman just to make sure I don't miss any important pieces of information and that it all sounds coherent.
As I go through this process, I will give two more updates on how things are going and different feedback that I'm given from my professors. Hopefully I can knock the majority of this out the week we get back from Easter Break, which is in two weeks. That way I can stop worrying about all of this as soon as possible.
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
One Week Until Thesis Thoughts- Journal 5
Right now, I'm sitting in the library procrastinating putting my presentation together for my thesis next Thursday, April 11th, which will be a day that goes down in infamy. Basically it just determines if I graduate or not, no big deal. I also decided to see what other good or potentially heinous things happened on April 11th in history. Apparently, the river ferry, "Princess Victoria" sank in the Thames River in Ontario and killed 180 people. I know that sounds gruesome and horrible, because it is. I chose this specific event to relate it to how my future could also go on April 11th. I could also be a river ferry that sinks in the TLU river. Who knows? We'll find out in nine days though, don't worry.
On a much brighter note, the whole point of this particular blog post is to discuss my recent discoveries that I've made regarding my thesis. I'm not sure if 'discovery' is a good word, but I've essentially found a much better way of describing my thesis with some new sources. Thanks to the help of Dr. Vrooman and his book that I should have read a long time ago (Freshman year), I was able to read about the Elaboration Likelihood Model, which discusses how we process information that we are being given. There are two different ways that that happens. One is the peripheral way, which is shortcuts that our brain takes. I like to think of it as the feeder roads to the freeways. That being said, the central way of processing, which is the important things we need to go home with, is the freeway in this example.
My thesis as of yesterday had just been that face-to-face training was more effective than online training and I kind of had an understanding as to why, but it was way too broad of a thesis to try and argue coherently without getting off topic. With my thesis, which more or less a few scholarly words is: The online training course, Think About It, is less effective than the face-to-face training because there is no facilitator to bring the audience back from peripheral processing to central processing.
So, if you're still following along, this is what's going on in my brain right now as far as how I plan to elaborate on this more. Back to the freeway analogy. If you drive on the feeder roads instead of the highway, what happens? You have more stoplights, people to merge with, and potential backups at entrances and exits to the freeway. When you take the freeway, you have everything in front of you. You can go to whichever lane you need to be, there are some backups that occur, but realistically those won't last the entire time anyway. When you do the freeway you're getting the most bang for your buck because even though you may end up in the same place, you get slowed down by so many obstacles by taking the feeder road. This is what happens when we process information. In our peripheral, there are distractions that are holding us back from fully gaining all of the information handed to us. With central processing, we still get the same information but we are more cognitive and aware of what's going on because you have to when cars are going 75+ miles per hour.
Okay, I know that was a lot. I'm kind of typing word vomit right now just trying to get some ideas going through my head as I prepare to go more into detail of my analysis with my new thesis. I hope this all makes sense in the end, and hopefully you continue with life taking the freeway all the way down I-35 instead of the feeder roads because they will back you up even farther. So my next steps from here in terms of feedback and the paper: Dr. Bisha will give feedback for our paper, and then after we present we get feedback on the presentation. From there, we continue to make changes to our paper as we need to. So stay tuned for updates throughout that process as well.
On a much brighter note, the whole point of this particular blog post is to discuss my recent discoveries that I've made regarding my thesis. I'm not sure if 'discovery' is a good word, but I've essentially found a much better way of describing my thesis with some new sources. Thanks to the help of Dr. Vrooman and his book that I should have read a long time ago (Freshman year), I was able to read about the Elaboration Likelihood Model, which discusses how we process information that we are being given. There are two different ways that that happens. One is the peripheral way, which is shortcuts that our brain takes. I like to think of it as the feeder roads to the freeways. That being said, the central way of processing, which is the important things we need to go home with, is the freeway in this example.
My thesis as of yesterday had just been that face-to-face training was more effective than online training and I kind of had an understanding as to why, but it was way too broad of a thesis to try and argue coherently without getting off topic. With my thesis, which more or less a few scholarly words is: The online training course, Think About It, is less effective than the face-to-face training because there is no facilitator to bring the audience back from peripheral processing to central processing.
So, if you're still following along, this is what's going on in my brain right now as far as how I plan to elaborate on this more. Back to the freeway analogy. If you drive on the feeder roads instead of the highway, what happens? You have more stoplights, people to merge with, and potential backups at entrances and exits to the freeway. When you take the freeway, you have everything in front of you. You can go to whichever lane you need to be, there are some backups that occur, but realistically those won't last the entire time anyway. When you do the freeway you're getting the most bang for your buck because even though you may end up in the same place, you get slowed down by so many obstacles by taking the feeder road. This is what happens when we process information. In our peripheral, there are distractions that are holding us back from fully gaining all of the information handed to us. With central processing, we still get the same information but we are more cognitive and aware of what's going on because you have to when cars are going 75+ miles per hour.
Okay, I know that was a lot. I'm kind of typing word vomit right now just trying to get some ideas going through my head as I prepare to go more into detail of my analysis with my new thesis. I hope this all makes sense in the end, and hopefully you continue with life taking the freeway all the way down I-35 instead of the feeder roads because they will back you up even farther. So my next steps from here in terms of feedback and the paper: Dr. Bisha will give feedback for our paper, and then after we present we get feedback on the presentation. From there, we continue to make changes to our paper as we need to. So stay tuned for updates throughout that process as well.
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