Now that the school year is over, and my time in Cathie’s class has come to a close, the only thing left to do is reflect. This class was a challenge for me, but it taught me the ups and downs of working with no real guarantee of a reward. But now as I sit in my new job (that I can thank this class for!) I can already see how the skills I learned in this class have changed my outlook and work ethic. Everyday when I sit down for work I have to collaborate, come up with new ideas, and expand on ideas from others. I have to edit using WordPress, (which is the website you’re on now!) and use HTML. If I didn’t have this class, I wouldn’t feel motivated to go that extra mile for my new job, not knowing if there truly is any positive outcome. What you do gain out of your hard work is work you can be proud of, people around you who will value as a trustworthy person, and pride in yourself that you’re trying to make a difference in your work environment.
I just want to thank everyone in this class that helped me learn something about myself, and to Cathie for always pushing me to achieve more.
Category: Uncategorized
Student Showcase of Research and Engagement
I had a great time presenting our project today at the Student Showcase of Research and Engagement! It was a great opportunity to speak with various people from campus and show off the work we have been doing all semester long!
Habits of Mind
The year is quickly coming to an end for us. For me, this is always a time of reflection and comprehension of the things that I’ve learned in my class over the last 3 months of classes and experiences that I have had. Something new to me this semester is the idea of the habits of mind. I was doing a study away program last semester when the habits of mind were beginning to be introduced at Plymouth State, so I spent a lot of time learning about the habits of mind and trying to connect what I do in my classes to these habits of mind.
This class has been a catalyst to me learning and understanding how I can implement each of the habits of mind into my personal and professional development. Each habit of mind has had a unique and powerful impact on my learning during this semester. They have made it clear to me what I am learning and how I will be able to bring that knowledge with me into the future and be able to successfully apply it. The signposts that go along with these habits of mind have been useful to me so I am able to recognize the different elements and learning goals associated with each habit of mind.
I am going to take a moment to reflect on each habit of mind and the corresponding signposts that I have practiced during this course and the creation of our journey map project.
Our Twine is Nearly Ready!
After a very productive week in the classroom, our class was able to put together our (almost) final draft of our interactive journey map. The design process is iterative, so we definitely will continue to test our Twine, and make any adjustments necessary. Feel free to click the link and test out our work for yourself!
What am I Passionate About?
Stressful. Overwhelming. Lost.
Those three words describe how I felt during my college application process. What I have found in my research is, I am not the only one feeling this uneasiness. It is actually extremely common for students today to experience this. What I am interested in, is to find a way to ease this anxiousness.
Why? Because I want students to choose their best fit higher education like I chose PSU. I want to make the first year experience full of feelings of connectedness and ease. Let’s get started!
Here are some articles I found that were good reads and relatable to this topic:
Easing College Admissions Anxiety
How to Discover and Address College Admission Anxieties
Updates!
Our class is making great progress to continue and expand our project into something usable for Plymouth State’s website. Last week, we met with the Admissions team to discuss our prototype, and they gave us the green light to continue making it.
This week, we are meeting with the marketing team to discuss our prototype and see if they have any suggestions to make.
As we move forward into the next few weeks, we will continue to develop our prototype, making it flow in a way that is useful to incoming students using Twine. We discovered that students have different time frames to complete certain documents, so we want to make this document universal.
Twine Prototype Update
Our class has moved forward with building an outward journey map for prospective students using Twine.
Our goal for the next week is to have each student team member focus on a particular part of the Twine. Our prototype will have five nodes, each representing a different part of the critical path for the journey map. Each student in our class is assigned a node, and a sixth student (myself) is designing the Twine interface.
I’ve used the Plymouth State Marketing Department’s resources, available on their website, as a guideline when designing the prototype. These have been extremely helpful, as they have given me access to the hexidecimal codes for Plymouth State University’s colors, as well as access to some high resolution photos of the campus.
To see the interactivity of the Twine prototype so far, check out the link in the site’s header menu. I will continue posting each version of the prototype as our class moves forward.
We hope to have a solid prototype ready to show the Admissions team by the end of the month.
Twine Prototype
The first project we will be tackling in the course will be creating a revised, interactive journey map that faces outward for potential students.
Step One for the project? Build a prototype. Our class is taking a “learn by building” approach to the journey map revision. We will be using Twine to create the journey map for students. Check out more about Twine here.
Below is a sample of what’s to come. Check it out! Fellow Signature Project-ers: if you have any questions on how I made this, just email me at rjfrench@plymouth.edu.
