Challenge: One of the biggest challenges our group has faced so far is scope. This project topic is a massive undertaking and we definitely felt the weight of that once we started our research process. Our research made it clear that there are so many unique problems regarding interdisciplinary collaboration on the NYU Brooklyn campus, and we cannot realistically design for all of them within this project. Ideally, we would have liked to choose one of these problems and do another round of research in order to create a more targeted solution. Because we don't have time for that, it's been hard to interpret the research we did collect in a way that could translate into learning design. 

Surprising: One of our research findings I found surprising was that the organizers of academic-related NYU events, like workshops, don't always purposefully facilitate connections between the people who attend. I can imagine that some people might find community-building activities annoying, but I can also imagine that many people would feel less fulfilled by these events because they only come out of it with academic knowledge. I feel like implementing that sort of practice would do way more good than harm.

Interesting: When reflecting on my interview process, I notice that many times I altered the order and wording of my questions in real-time to keep the participant feeling like we were having a conversation instead of a formal interview. However, in hindsight, I realize that this might have skewed our data a little bit. A few times I accidentally asked leading questions in the interviews because I didn't read the questions exactly as we had written them beforehand. This is good practice for real studies! It showed me how important it is to stick to the script.

Challenge: The biggest challenge I felt was to make our topic concrete. We switched our topic so many times, it took so long to finally decide on one. I still have so many doubts about it though, but it's ok, we'll have to live with uncertainty and try our way out.

Interesting: The whole thing is such a mess. Just like what I felt last semester in UX class. Thing don't make sense to me if they're not in super neat logic. But I'm also getting intrigued and obssessed with it, I want to do more projects like this. Because I think this is what the real world situations are like. I want to improve my ability to live through those situations.

Surprising: It's surprising how making this website took so long even when I already had an idea of how to structure it. So many details just surfaced as I made it. Some questions and confusions even led to systematical changes in our whole structure. But I like it. Everything finally lined up -- gaps, goals, and tasks, finally align and clear. It's also surprising -- but also kind of expected -- that most of the data in our survey ended up being not useful information. But I haven't thought through why it is the case yet -- was it natural because we switched topic in the middle, or because we wasn't asking the right research questions, or because we weren't able to map survey questions well to the research questions in super clear way?

Challenge: One of the more difficult challenges was narrowing our topic down. It was hard to find a path for this topic that lent itself to an instructional design.  There were so many possibilities for an interdisciplinary connector throuogh other means such as a web-based intervention that paired people together according to what they already knew versus what they want to learn, or a student-led conference or day-of-learning. But again, these ideas were extremely broad and weren't conducive for instructional design.

Interesting: Since starting the project, I feel like my ideas on what interdisciplinary learning means has shifted. I've conducted interviews with many faculty, each with a different stance on interdisciplinary learning, whether that be in more overt or subtle ways. The word 'interdisciplinary,' in my mind, has transitioned from a meaning that is solid as rock to something more fluid and transcendental. Something that comes in waves and washes up on the shore. It's reading between lines. The concreteness of the word has since fled. One of the department chairs I interviewed has expressed how the words 'interdisciplinary' and 'collaboration' are used so often that they have lost all meaning- and those words have stuck with me. I suppose the words have not lost meaning, but rather taken on many more forms. Does something lose meaning when it's translation is interpreted an increasing amount of ways? Anyway...

Surprising: What we were initially exploring was completely different from our initial project topic. First, we were exploring how to teach high schoolers to combine  their passions so that they have more direction in choosing their career path. However, we changed this because of our limited access to high school students, as well as the necessary consent forms involved in any type of research involving minors. Our scope shifted to NYU Brooklyn students, in endless supply. Since then, this has narrowed to NYU Brooklyn Graduate students focusing on content related to how to collaborate with people from different disciplines on interdisciplinary projects. 

Challenge: During this period, I learned how to narrow down the broad scope corresponding to our progress. We gathered and analyzed data at this research stage to clear our target group's gaps. But then we found we could only address some issues and had to prioritize the gaps we tried to bridge.

Interesting: It's interesting to do secondary research about the meaning of interdisciplinary learning & collaboration and the current resources in the Brooklyn Campus. I have never further reached out to the resources I can utilize in my future study.

Surprising: I learned to overcome the uncertainty that I used to try to make everything sure as soon as possible, but it's hard to achieve, which depends on objective and subjective conditions that I can't handle. It is unique to have such an experience, and it made me feel the different modes of cooperation with other people.