Saturday, May 17, 2008
Observation and Service Learning
For weeks, we have been studying qualitative research methods. We have participated in PHC6 as well as indulged in volunteer work at the Denver Rescue Mission. How has this style of research and observation influenced you as a writer? In other words, what impact does it play in your writing abilities. Does it allow you to consider other rhetoric? Does it modify how you present your evidence? Does it make you think more about your audience? What do you think is the purpose of the observation and service learning that we have done in class? Is is significant to writing and research? In what way? Please expand on any thoughts that you may have as far as observation and service learning and the role it plays with writing and research.
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The work we did learning about qualitative research definitely affected how I viewed PHC6 and the Denver Rescue Mission. At PHC6 we were fresh from writing our paper about contrasting qualitative rhetorics so that was in the front of my mind. As I overheard my client and other clients talk to the people from the different agencies I listened more carefully and picked up on the commonalities between the clients. I thought of their stories, as insensitive as this may sound, as research opportunities, not just unfortunate situations. Is that taking advantage of someone in a poor situation or is that the whole idea of qualitative research?
All our observation and service learning and writing in this class has made me a more aware and involved writer. Usually, with a research paper, I find some credible websites and use those as sources. What we’ve done has taken my research writing to a new, more advanced level. We actually participated in an event and in a way collected our own research and wrote about it in our service logs. Although I won’t go out and do qualitative research from now on for every research paper, I have a better appreciation for how qualitative research is done. These volunteer experiences combined with our research into qualitative studies will make me a better writer because I will be better able to utilize qualitative research in my own writing.
I think that all of our focus on qualitative research has allowed me to realize that it can really help research be powerful. Actually participating in it and having it confirm and challenge some of what I personally believed, and what steretypes I had encountered in the past really helped me realize what qualitative research can prove. I think that I prefer to use qualitative research as a writer, because it can make an argument so strong. I think that qualitative research adds a "face" to the numbers of quantitative research because it involves humans and it brings something that can't be denied by readers.
Working at PHC6 and at the Denver Rescue Mission has greatly influenced my style of research and observation by showing me that by actually going into the community and interacting with the homeless versus reading about them and hearing numbers listed off about them made much more of an impact on me, overall. I was able to hear stories first-hand, witness how different people interacted, and even interacted with them myself. The experience was much more powerful than reading any novel or article could be, in my opinion. This impacted my writing style by showing me that numbers don’t necessarily make a lasting impact like qualitative writing does; now, after these experiences, I would try to keep the numbers I list to a minimum and use stories of first-hand experiences more. This, I believe, would make for a stronger piece with more lasting affects on a reader than simply using quantitative rhetoric. I think this experience really brought the quarter we spent in this writing class together; we spent a lot of time talking about the homeless and reading different types of literature in order to become familiar with them, but actually going into the community and seeing the people that once had a home but came across a bad part of their lives and interacting with them really allowed for a learning experience that can’t really be offered by a book. I think service learning is a great tool and I hope that my experience with it does not end with this class but continues throughout my education and life.
This research has made a huge impact on my writing. I think in the way that qualitative research is done rather than numbers in quantitative research. I find that first person experience is much more helpful and useful than numbers which could be incorrectly skewed. This does not have much of an impact on the words i use but it provides me with a greater and more complete understanding of sources that will be useful to me and can be used in my writing. This had not made me think much more about my audience because I will more likely use the sources and this type of research to prove my points rather than change the use of my audience. I think that service learning has played a big role in my writing for this course, mainly in the examples that I can use. I have learned so many lessons from so many people in many different circumstances. Because of these lessons, I am able to use first hand examples that are similair to those in which are found in qualitative research. These examples and this new knowledge has led me to respect and understand a lot more about how I would conduct research.
I connect with qualitative research far more than quantitative. Numbers and linear data doesn't do a whole lot for me in general. Getting out and experiencing our subjects first hand and being able to view them makes writing much easier for me. Writing about PHC has come quicker to me, I think because I was able to be there and understand the issues at a deeper level than quantitative data would have allowed me. In general I don't learn much from seeing numbers or reading statistics about anything. Qualitative research has by far been the most successful form of research for me that we have done so far in the class. All the data i needed to write the last paper was in my head and I had little difficulty recalling the events that occurred at PHC.
The outside work we did definitely gave me a whole new perspective to writing. I have written research papers and I have written reflective papers on my life, but I have never written a paper using a required school event as my main source of research. The personal experience I had working at PHC6 was so valuable to me that I cannot even explain it and it made for a great topic to write about. I also had never combined personal experience and research into one paper before, it has always been one or the other. This made for a completely different writing experience than I have ever had before.
From working at Project Homeless Connect and the Denver Rescue Mission, I can easily and more comfortably talk about homelessness. For example, in my leadership class I was required to discuss various community service opportunities I have volunteered at over the course of the year. That essay in my leadership class was extremely easy to write about because of all the work I have done through my WRIT 1133 class dealing with homelessness. Before this class I have never written essays where lots of research was required. This class taught me a new style of writing that involved finding research materials, then drawing inferences from the research, and then providing personal opinions. I feel like this class has extended my abilities into different areas. I believe it has improved me as a writer and prepared me for the future because now I can more easily write essays involving qualitative research for example. The purpose of the observation and service learning that I have done in class is to gain multiple and different perspective. The entire class was based around homelessness therefore through observation and service learning I was able to gain different perspectives. During the entire quarter there were many in-class discussions, which allowed me to gain perspectives and beliefs other than mine. For example, the most interesting day in class for me was hearing many different perspectives about stereotypes of homeless people. Then this allowed me to expand my writing using different styles and providing new insights for my essay on false stereotypes of homelessness that I completed earlier this quarter.
this style of research has influenced me as a writer in many different ways. i believe that it really modifies how I present my evidence. That how you might word things in writing cannot come off as you want it to and offend a reader. I also have noticed the difference between reading about something and going out there and seeing it by yourself with your own eyes, and how much more of an impact it makes then just reading words. It also provides me with a more clear understanding of things. It also took away many of the stereo types I once had about homeless people.
I think this qualitative research was very insightful for me. I liked the style of the ethnography but I also liked how much this research can differ in between fields of study as well as the type of study that is being conducted. Qualitative research is very useful for writing and being able to analyse and observe behaviors. Personally I am rather interested in psychology and human behaviors and qualitative research is a good way to observe that. Obviously this is related to writing and research because it is writing about different forms of research and studies and their observations.
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