Research Reflection

Our team was able to gain useful insights from exploring our learners' challenges and needs. A significant aha moment occurred when I grasped the importance of identifying positive traits in relationships, realizing that students’ understanding needed to extend beyond merely addressing negative aspects. The learning gap, we discovered, was not a straightforward issue of knowledge but a complex web including skills, attitudes, and diverse backgrounds. Looking ahead, a lingering question is how we can determine the sufficiency of measuring learning objectives in a process that is inherently intricate. The complexity of the challenge makes it challenging to observe outcomes. Nevertheless, our team successfully designed measurable goals that encompass both the knowledge and application facets of students’ learning journey.

Each team member approached the project with different strengths and personal learning goals that contributed to the overall collaboration. We worked well together by taking charge of specific parts of each task, communicating frequently on what was completed and what needed support. Useful mindsets include a willingness to be flexible, providing and receiving feedback, and having a growth mindset towards iteration. 

When creating surveys and interviews, we planned to ask questions that would address our assumptions without being leading and being conscious of our word choices. As a team, we talked through our assumptions, making clear what were our own opinions and what were backed up by evidence. What struck me was that in certain cases, the lack of knowledge was just one layer of the problem. The complexity was highlighted as we considered the many reasons students might struggle to implement what they inherently know is right. Pinpointing the precise nature of the learning problem was a challenging task.

During the analysis phase I realized the importance of understanding the needs and requirements of all stakeholders . Originally I thought that this project would have a very linear structure because I believe that this topic would yield very straightforward qualitative and quantitative data. However, during my individual analysis I realized that I was more focused on a solution than understanding the needs of each stakeholder. Once I realized this, I shifted my focus so that I could pay more attention to the needs of the people who would be directly impacted by the project's success or failure. By focusing on the needs of the stakeholders, I was able to identify potential risks, consider the perspectives of all stakeholders and also consider how the project could be better aligned with the stakeholders expectations and objectives.

Each member of our team  focused on fulfilling the requirements of their role by leveraging their skills, experience and prior knowledge from previous courses. We all understood our individual roles so there wasn’t much conflict when it came to developing the group project. Any questions or concerns were addressed during our weekly meetings, which were flexible or via slack communication. Difficulties did arise when it came to developing our research questions but we were able to utilize the milestone documents along with other tools like our Jam board to generate questions that would be useful to our learning goals and objectives.

When we first started creating an outline for our project we took into consideration the complexities surrounding emotional development, peer-to-peer interactions and who our stakeholders would be. As a group we acknowledged that we were in no way experts in our topic of choice so we approached this topic with an open mind. This mindset of curiosity and willingness to learn allowed us to delve deeper into this unfamiliar topic so that we could gain a better understanding of how to serve our stakeholders.

When going through the Analysis phase, we discussed data that confirmed some of our initial hypotheses as well as other data that seemed to contradict our original beliefs. For example, many students agreed with the importance of understanding abusive relationship patterns, but when asking if students were motivated to learn about this they were not as motivated. This opened new questions on how to fill this motivation gap.

Our team members brought different perspective and background that helped approach our research phase from many aspects, from data collection to data analysis (affinity mapping, coding, etc.). We initially struggled with narrowing down our research questions, as our topic could be taken in many different directions. We resolved this by hypothesizing the issues we are looking to address and how we can validate our hypothesis, or invalidate it for revision.

When we were first planning our research questions, we documented and outlined our own existing knowledge to address if our beliefs are founded in experience or potential bias. Sharing our initial opinions with the team allowed other team members to contradict or push back on any assumptions that may be rooted in bias.