Midterm project check-in

Click here to see what I have so far on my Digital Guide to the Aerial Arts. I’m still in the phase of experimenting with what is possible in responsive document creation, so the table of contents clicks out to each of its pages, and I embedded a video on the Chinese Pole page (which doesn’t work on here for some reason, though it’s working fine on my computer…pathing issue?). Much more content and reactivity to come; right now there is only content on the Cloud Swing page and the Chinese Pole page.

Learning Reflection – Research Methods

-I know it’s not necessarily required for this course, but I would like to have at least a general idea of my terminal research topic by the end of the term.

I definitely have a really good starting point now, and I feel very eager to move onto the next step.

-Talking with Meredith about the logic model methodology made me realize that I don’t know all that much about different methodologies. I would like to expand my understanding in this area.

I still don’t feel like I know enough about methodologies, so I will try to fill in this information during my research reading. 

-I would also like to learn a sort of “best practices” for conducting academic research in this field. My undergrad degrees were both literature-focused, which made conducting research somewhat straightforward. AAD walks the line between “academic” and “professional” and I’m interested to see how that manifests in research.

The interesting thing about the arts management field is that it is so broad that “best practices” don’t really seem to exist specific to the field. After hearing about the research of many AAD faculty members, if became clear that everyone approached things differently. Still, I feel like I do have a better handle on how to conduct research well.

-I have an idea of a lot of different research methods, but I would like to know actual names and categorizations for them, even if it would only serve to give a better elevator speech about my topic in the future.

I’ve definitely learned about a lot of different methods, and I’m sure I’ll come across many more. 

Learning Reflection – Marketing, Media, and Communication II

1. I have two years of marketing experience for a small arts nonprofit. In this course I would like to get some hard theoretical marketing knowledge to further contextualize that experience.

Having Darrel teach much of this course was helpful for adding context to what I had already learned in the field about marketing. I could confirm much of what I learned as well as adding concrete knowledge and terms to some ideas that I had only understood theoretically.

2. I have never made a fully fleshed out formal marketing plan, so I would like to learn the steps involved with that, best practices, and other concerns related to the process.

Learning that there isn’t one way to do a marketing plan and that it really goes on a case by case basis was very helpful. It’s all about intentionality, much like other aspects of arts management. 

3. I want to learn how to better engage with social media. It’s not my cup of tea, and being a member of my generation, I feel like it should be.

Seeing examples of social media calendars and having to write a social media plan into my individual marketing plan was very helpful. I also worked on applying some of these principles to my GTF position, which added good context. Now it’s all about follow through. 

4. Because my marketing experience is based off of a choral organization, I want to expand my understanding to be more general, which will allow me to be more effective anywhere.

Going through a plan with OCT as well as individually helped with this.

5. I want to discover more resources that one can  use when conducting a case study to make the findings accurate and thorough.

Looking back, I’m not totally sure what I meant by this, but I do feel like I have more resources now and I know better where to look for them.