HW for Tu 12/3

I hope that you found today’s library session useful in terms of discovering library resources, locating sources, and using appropriate keywords to search. We will continue finding/evaluating sources for next week.

For our next class (Tu 12/3), each person should find/annotate two additional sources, and these sources must be found using the City Tech library databases. This means that each group will have 6 new sources by our next class. Each group should submit their work the following ways (don’t forget to put all group members’ names and the topic/site on your work):

  • post their new six annotated sources to OpenLab (categorize as “Annotated Bibliography)
  • bring three printed copies of their complete (12-source, with sources from Th 11/22 and Tu 12/3 combined)
  • submit one copy as a Word Document to Dropbox.

You should also touch base with your group members at some point before Tuesday’s class and start to discuss all of your research so far (fieldwork and academic research). Now that you have all of this new information (from your observations, surveys, and academic research), how are you going to approach your topic? What have you learned? What do you still need to learn? Can you focus things more with this new information? How are you going to put it all together?

*Also, as Professor Pawlukewicz explained, your observations and surveys are due on OpenLab by tomorrow (W 11/27). Each group should make two collaborative posts, one for observations and one for surveys, and categorize appropriately.

Most importantly, enjoy your holiday/break 🙂

Technology at city tech (Sophonie, Katherine, Cristian)

The topic for our project is Technology (computers and Wi-Fi) and our research question is How does technology provides academic success to students?  We came up with this question because we think that since City Tech is a big college with a lot of students, we need more advances in technology so that it could have a positive impact in our success as a student. During the project, some of the places that we are going to observe carefully are the learning center, the library and how does the Wi-Fi works. As we have noticed the Learning center is supposed to be a space where students can do their work without having any problem. However the room is too small and students can barely have space for themselves. Also there are too many students on campus so it would be better if the learning center can provide us with more computers so that everyone can get the chance to get their work done. The library is always full but they don’t have a big amount of computers, so students always have to make a line and wait for a computer to be free. Obviously this is not good for us as students because sometimes we need to just print something but because of the long line we get late to class. Another of the issues that we want to cover during this project is the printer and the copy machine. As students we need to have more access to print our work, but city tech has a rule in which the student is allowed to print just 25 pages per day. If we want to get a copy of a paper we have to pay for it. Finally, the Wi-Fi doesn’t work well and when it does it’s slow and it’s hard for students to get online or finish their work.

We know that the use of technology is a very important and essential factor at city tech because it provides us with an advance tool to success and good grades. However, without this technology students are struggling by getting their work done and this could have a negative effect on their academic success. Some of the questions that we have in mind for this project are: how do you feel by making the line on the library just to get your work done? Have you ever struggled with the amount of paper that city tech provide us? And how does not having Wi-Fi affect you?

Architectural structure (Eloina,Saldin,Sha-Kina,Ivan)

The research question is: How does architectural structure promote happiness/well-being? Students want to enter a college that has a lovely looking structure to spend 2 to 4 years in. This topic was chosen because the architectural structure makes up the mood of the students. Throughout this research the persuasion to enhancing architectural structure is needed in order for the president of City Tech to truly promote happiness/ well-being.

This topic should interest students because the environment influences motivation, and can potentially lead to success in college. Commuters’ common sayings are “I want to have a real college experience.” The dream of “having a real college experience” starts from the structure, and how the building looks. Most of the research will be within the hallways and the actual structure of the hall ways and hallways on different levels. In the project there will be source from online and also students will be answering a series of questionnaires that deals with the research question. The way the project can be narrowed is by observing small details that the hallways contain that promotes the happiness/ well-being of students along with having a college experience. To go more into depth within the project students will be asked, “How can the City Tech make their students experience a college experience? This question will provide suggestions on improving architectural structure because students care about how the campus looks like. The focus for the project is to indicate how the structure, and the appearance of City Tech can fulfill happiness/ well-being to all the students.

Exploring the Wellness-center (Dina, Brittany, & Esteban O. Ramos_the 2nd)

The topic chosen to discuss was The Health Center. How has the wellness-center promote the well being of the City Tech Students (?)  Many answer came up, such as, it is something that needed to  be tackle for teens who were ill-informed, people have yet to know how HIV can be transmitted or how giving a sip of soda to others can lead to some bad things, but the real reason that a raised  the most was, city tech students are young adults that have yet to be exposed to these facts. Facts ranging from, being a single mom, HIV, STDS, and many, many more that the wellness-center provides information to. A lot of information underneath people in the wellness-center, topics that can and will grab readers with the harsh truth about sex, drugs and pregnancy. People should be interested in the wellness-ness center because it does not only informs you but also has pills, check ups and vaccinations are provided.

The information that’ll be used will mostly be from the wellbeing-center such as, pamphlets, interviewing some of the workers and pictures of how the informations is being showed to the students. Another way we are going to get our information from is asking students around city tech and see how they are informed. Something that the students will be asked are, are they getting the information about safe sex (?) how has the college informed them about information (?) what do they wish to learn from the health center (?) and what would they wish for the health center do to help promote their infomation (?) The project is argumentative, the college needs to promote more information to the students, rather than having it underneath people all the time.

Student Services at City Tech (Eunice, Kiyanna, Nahid)

The chosen topic that will be discussed will be City Tech student assisting services. The forces driven behind shinning lights on this topic is the ideology that programs/ services need to be recognized by the student body at City Tech. After all they do promote the well being of the students attending the college. The evidence behind used to support the findings will be personal interviews with individuals who work in the field, the student handbook and last but not least the students who use the services. Hopefully, after finding the evidence to support ideas on the services/programs that city tech student assistance provides, many of the unknown will be answered such how are the services obtained by the student who is eligible for the service, what they provide, and how they help the student or groups of students.

As well as showing and describing how and why these student services contribute to the well being of City Tech students, there will be a focus on how these services promote themselves to the students. There are many of the services that go unknown to the student body at City Tech. How do these student services advertise themselves? Are they clear so each student knows where they are located and how they work? Many student services go on heard of, some of which are able to help a student’s academic year flow with ease. Students should have access to the information of all these services. They are for the assistance of the student after all.

“Learning Area at City Tech” from Sophonie, Katherine, Cristian

The research question of this project is: How does the learning area promote stabilization to students? The area we would be looking at is the library, learning center and the tutoring area. The learning area is a very important place for the student. It’s the place that student in City Tech look for help like exam and essays. The library in City Tech needs more improvement it to small; they don’t have enough computers for student. Students have to wait in a long line just for the computers. They should allow the student to print out more than 25 pages per day. They should have more tables for student to study. They should have more than 2 printers in the library. Lots of students attend City Tech, and City Tech is a big college so students suppose to be comfortable. The learning center should be bigger. The WI-FI at the learning center is to slow, it hard for student to get access to the WI-FI with their personal computers. There are too many students that attend City Tech so the learning center needs more spaces. The tutoring area is way too small. They need more staff that is willing to tutor students. The staff that tutors the students should write correction to the essay. They should tell student what they should do in their essay to make it better. City Tech tutors don’t really put enough effort in the students essay. These are the thing that needs improvement in the learning area for students at City Tech.

We are interested in this area because it’s something important that every college should provide. The library, learning center and tutoring area is very important for student because they are the source we need to be successful in our careers. So City Tech needs to provide student with a comfortable area to study and improve our academics. The sources we would use for this research is personal observation, the internet and critical thinking. The question we would ask to student at City Tech, Is how comfortable to you feel in the library, learning center and the tutoring area? Do you like waiting in line for the computers? Do you get enough help in the tutoring area? Do you like to use your computer in the learning center?

Socializing Areas at City Tech (Diana, Wesley, Fenfang)

The research question of this project is  What is the relationship between the socializing areas and happiness at City Tech.” These areas include the atrium, lounges, and cafeteria, etc. This topic that is about the socializing areas might be interesting because social interaction and socialization are important to people. These are the on-campus places that allow people to interact with one another in order to make connections and get to know more about each other.  This topic might interest  the current students because they may feel the need of improving some curtain socializing areas since they might already have their own ideas in  mind. For the future students, this topic might be one of the elements that can affect their decisions of choosing which college to attend. They might wonder what socializing areas does City Tech have that can boost their happiness and have a good experience at City Tech. Also, the faculties and staffs at administration might be thinking of how to improve the school in order to build a better learning environment and socializing areas for all the students at City Tech.  Therefore, this topic is really a important aspect that need to be improved to increase the well-being and happiness for the City Tech community. 

There are many kinds of sources can be used in the project. Using the internet sources, such as looking for some information online is useful. However, for this particular project, it is important to gather the ideas, thoughts, and opinions from  the  staffs, faculties, and students at City Tech. This would be so helpful to help on creating a effective proposal for this project. Thus, besides of using the internet research method, it would be a good idea to conduct surveys, too. It is a important issue to know about how they think about the socializing areas in City Tech. It would be great if they can provide some suggestions of improving the socializing areas in City Tech. There are some questions that will address through this project. Some of these questions are: Do the students and staffs think that there is the need of making changes and improvements to the socializing areas? If so, where are the areas that need to improve? Do people like the socializing areas at City Tech? How often do they go to these areas? Do the socializing areas make them feel comfortable? Are the socializing area environments clean? Do the students feel that it is easy to find a seat at these socializing areas? What do they usually do at these socializing areas? Do they think that there is enough socializing areas? By finding out these questions, people can learn about how the socializing areas affect the sense of well-being for the City Tech community. The proposal of this project would be argumentative, and not just a statement of fact because everyone has different opinions and ideas toward these socializing areas, many interesting points will be generated through the research project in the end. 

Learning Areas at City Tech (Reiana,Takiera & Alex)

The research question for this project is, “Does the learning centers in City Tech provide help for the students?” The learning areas of City Tech interest students because it is a way to enhance learning abilities. Also, it is a way for students to gain feedback from their work. The learning areas such as the library and the learning center are good sources to enhance the learning abilities of students. A way to narrow down the topic is to pick one specific learning area of the school. To make this short research project more manageable, students can start off listing the step by step process, instead of doing things all at once. The important part of this project is learning how the learning areas are helpful of not helpful for the students at City Tech. This topic should interest current students, future students, faculty and staff. Current students should feels good that there is a place to go where they can study, do homework and get  help on their work. Future students should wonder if there are effective work spaces for them when considering City Tech as one of their choice of colleges. Lastly, there should be enough faculty and staff to help students with computers and/or finding books in the library and help students get feedback on their work at the learning center.

Some questions that support this research would be, Do the students look like they are comfortable in the environment?, How often are students using the learning areas?, Are the learning areas noisy or peaceful?, Do the students feel like they are getting enough help in the learning center?, Does the learning areas ever get crowded to the point where the student can’t get effective help or cannot find somewhere to study? These questions would be important to ask students from around the school in a survey because it affects their learning community. This proposal is definitely argumentative and not just a statement of fact. There are many points as to what kind of effective learning areas City Tech has that can be argued.

Research Proposals

Hi everyone:

Just a friendly reminder, since I will be out of town for the Society of Utopian Studies conference, tomorrow (Th 11/14) Professor Pawlukewicz will be covering our class.

As we discussed on Tuesday, you will spend all of class time tomorrow working together in your final project groups (if you need a refresher on who is in which groups, you can find the Final Project Groups here), brainstorming ideas and drafting your research proposal together.

An important part of this process is finding a “site” in City Tech (this can be a real, physical space, or a “virtual space” or a service/series of services, such as SEEK, or curricular activities, etc.). If possible, bring to class your New Student City Tech Handbook (that I distributed early in the semester), as this is a great resource for looking at the different services/sites at City Tech.

You should craft your research proposal according to what we discussed in class and what is posted on our course site under Research Proposal. A large part of this process is figuring out why this site is important in terms of students’ well-being/success at City Tech (why should people be invested in improving this site, and to devoting substantial resources–time, money, effort–to making it better according to your suggestions?), so spend some time in groups, before you start writing, thinking about your experiences as incoming (new) City Tech freshman, and what kinds of things you wish were different on campus.

Your group should post a collaborative post by Monday (11/18) night (one post for all three group members). However, I encourage you to post your blogs sooner than than so that I can provide some quick feedback to you in a  before Tuesday’s class.

As I mentioned, I strongly encourage (if you have access to one) bringing laptops to class so that you can draft the Research Proposal together there. City Tech wifi can be tricky, so make sure to arrive early to get online and troubleshoot any issues with that. Here are instructions for how to get online through the City Tech wifi.

And, not that you need reminding, but just a friendly reminder that the final draft of Essay #4 is due tomorrow: you should submit your final drafts to Dropbox and bring your folder (complete with peer review/pre-drafts) to class to hand in to Professor Pawlukewicz.

Have a wonderful week/end, and I’ll see you on Tuesday 🙂

Cheers,
Professor Belli