Through the development of our research poster, communication was essential in order to reach the final product that is shown within this website. During the final stages of development multiple emails were sent throughout the course of multiple days to ensure that every aspect on the poster was clearly articulate to a potential reader. If we did not communicate in this crucial step the poster would not have been to our standards. This is why throughout the development process it is necessary to effectively communicate opinions to get various viewpoints. However, there is another essential element in communication, and that is creating an environment where clear communication is achieved. Not every idea will be a good idea but fostering and environment that is willing to talk about why an idea could be bad is necessary for development and is critical in ensuring a final product that meets the goals of the group.
Critical Thinking
The hardest part of our research proposal was analyzing and compiling the data together concisely so that a person could easily glean the information from a piece of text. However, there is one roadblock to this and that is statistics. Within our research the statistics only told a part of the story, and it was our job to think critically about what these statistics mean and how they fit into the larger picture within our research. This process required us to think more abstractly about our data and create summaries that were concise, but also representative of the data.
Leadership
When designing a poster there is an initiation phase where people begin to evaluate whether the data collected could be represented in the format of a poster. Once this process finishes goals need to be set to ensure that people are following the same direction. However, it is important to provide checkpoints within the process to talk about the project as a collective to understand others’ opinions. In addition, it is critical within leadership to actively put yourself in a position to better support the people around you. This ensures that people can stay on schedule and feel like they are reaching a common goal. This in essence creates an environment that allows people to give their time and thought to a project outside of normal academics. These steps were essential in the process of designing our poster.
Teamwork
Our project could not have been finished without teamwork. This includes utilizing valuable time with our Professor Dr. Fisk and Graduate student Jenn Butt. Both of whom were vital in understanding how to process the data and ensuring that statistical evaluations were conducted in a way that represented the data accurately. In addition, during the duration of poster development compromises were made in the aspect of content and formatting. Taking the time to understand the opinions of others and understanding that we all have different perspectives on what a poster should look like allowed us to create a poster that was representative of our hard work with the research.