The second year student I interviewed was Carrie Morton. The reason I chose Carrie is for two reasons. First, she happened to take the same bus home as I did and got to talk to her right away. Secondly, she is part of the professional group project as she described is transforming the city landscape. I caught her off guard for the interview but here were some of the methods that see discussed her and her teammates were working on.

Surveys

Observations

Historical/Case Studies

I was really interested on how the group project worked. My first question was how the group project was set up and how they work in a group setting? From the interview, it sounded like everyone had a specific part in the project. Carrie couldn’t picture the end of her part of the project yet because she still had to do some research. However, she could say the different parts of the project and how they related to one another. It thought it was an interesting way to do research with a group in the professional project. As mentioned before, they are working for the same organization but their roles, or research, are very different.

The next question I had was how much the group met? Carrie mentioned how they met regularly but she didn’t say more specific than that.  She was still trying to wrap her head around what she was doing with the project though and they didn’t have to meet as much as they were right now. Again, there was a lot of individual work still needing to be done for the group. They are in the process now of creating a specific question for each person and making sure that is what they wanted to do.

The last informal question that came up was what she did and did not like about the group project. The challenges that she faced was she had a different idea of what the group project worked would be like. She has liked the project that they had been working on but she was redefining her own work. When she picked her topic she had other ideas in mind but the research turned out lead her the opposite side of her question.

Overall, interviewing Carrie was a great opportunity to consider the professional group project as the research component for the program.  It is new to the program and it is something I didn’t consider when applying last year. What I want to do for my research project is still up in the air. I don’t think I want to do the professional project as of now. However, it will depend on the few months ahead.

 

Here are some of my personal learning objectives I want to gain during this course.

1. I want to narrow my project down by my interests. Rural museums seem to be my overall focus but I have considered possibly doing something with sports. I don’t know if this has ever been done in the program but it will be interesting to see what will develop with the idea. Overall, exploring new ideas and subjects is something I want to accomplish.

2. Another learning objective I want to refine is the communication. The writing and editing part of papers is something I am always trying to improve. Also, staying in touch with mentors and advisers about the progress of my research. This will also help my time management and making me feel as though the research is important.

3. Lastly, I would like to explore different methods I am not familiar with during my undergraduate degree. The only research I have accomplished in the past is visual evidence and historical documents. I also have done surveys in the past and I have taken a statistics class. It would be interesting to experience other methods if it fits my research.