Today, I went to a group EPQ meeting with the coordinator Stephanie. The meeting was about all what we should have done by now, key things to include in our research, information on the essay, a timeline between now and March 2015 and also a self evaluation of our individual progress so far. See my notes and the individual progress sheet below:
In my last update, I made a table which showed what I wanted to achieve by the end of each week leading up to October 24th. Since making this table, I have found that this kind of planning doesn't work that well for me as I have not achieved as much as I was hoping to by this point. Below is the table I made previously
Week commencing
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To do
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Achieved?
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22nd September 2014
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- Re-read through articles
- Source table
- Choose another episode for final product.
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I have started re-reading through articles.
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29th September 2014
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- Questions to ask people in media/representation fields
- Email people in media/representation fields
- Make questionnaire based on topic (with extract of Friends)
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6th October 2014
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- Get people to take questionnaire
- Analyse findings from questionnaires
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13th October 2014
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20th October 2014
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I think the reason this hasn't been working for me is because I have planned too much into each week, on top of my other college work, and I tend not to do things in the order I set out to do this. I found this was a problem with my work over summer too as I ended up only being able to find internet articles due to other commitments taking up my time. It also drained my enthusiasm as I was not achieving my goals.
Instead of working to a plan in this way, I am now just going to make a list of all the tasks I need to do between now and a longer deadline and make a blog post every once in a while to present how much I have achieved in that amount of time. I will also set targets and new tasks in these blog posts.
As well as the self evaluation making me see that my plans are not working well for me, it also showed me that there are three things I need to work on:
1. Following through with my plans - links to change in planning above
2. Self evaluation - it was pointed out to me that in order to achieve the highest marks, I need to conduct more self evaluation on the research I have done
3. Other forms of research - the sheet gave lots of other ideas about how to research and this showed me that I have been very narrow minded when it comes to researching as so far I have only got internet research. Even though it is hard to find books or do observations on my topic, it is still possible to maybe get a focus group together or as experts (as I have been writing questions for).
To work on issue 1: I am going to change the way I plan how to do things in these last few weeks. I am also going to use any spare time I have to make sure I get these tasks done.
To work on issue 2: I am going to go back through old blog posts and add evaluation and set targets for how to improve. I will also do this with all future work.
To work on issue 3: I will continue writing questions to ask experts on the topic and send emails with these questions in. I will also create a survey to ask viewers of Friends and get their opinions on the topic. I may also try and conduct interviews with non-experts for this reason.
To do between now and 24th October:
- Complete source table and upload
- Self evaluate work so far
- Choose final two episodes for essay (maybe re evaluate the way I will write my essay to incorporate more evidence from episodes - blog post to come)
- Write questions to ask experts
- Email experts (for example Paul Marchbank, Southampton Solent) and find others
- Either use same questions as experts for viewers of Friends or write new questions
- Ask views of Friends these questions through surveys and interviews
- Analyse findings from this primary research
