Part 1: Building Blocks to Expertise
One of the most helpful building blocks for me was doing the Big Three assignment because it forced me to find scholarly sources instead of picking up the first thing that came up when I searched "Dog Behavior." At first, I thought these annontation assignments were long and unhelpful, but as we went it became clear that the information was much easier to understand, and I could explain what the journal was trying to say in much simpler terms.
Another helpful tool when completing this course was being able to comment on other's blog post and interacting with other people's work. I feel like this was a great way to ease into a more formal way of interacting with one another's work. I think commenting on discussion posts and blog posts made me uncomforatable at first but eventaully I saw it as a tool for learning. We are all trying to help one another grow, so I learned to not take critical feedback to heart and instead try and apply what people were saying to see if it improved my work.
The last tool that I found really helpful were actually doing these blog posts. It not only helped me process articles and weed out what was important versus what was extra information, but it also let me stick my voice in there. I thought that this was a really cool way to demonstrate our work without fully publishing our writing quite yet.
Part 2: Meeting Minimum Requirements on LR Draft
I am not very confident that my essay meets the requirements because I feel like I have no idea what I am doing anymore. I felt like I was staying with this course decently and then once we got to week 5 I felt lost and unmotivated which made my work stink! After revisions, it is getting better, but there's always room for improvement. I think that I introduced the studies I cited okay and I thought I had a strong introduction. I need to work on explaining the studies and adding statistics. I felt as though I did well with citations, but I still need to go back and make sure it is all in correct formatting.
Part 3: Social Media Campaign Planning
For the SMC, I was trying to see how dog behavior develops and what were some of the main contributors and how dog's environments can negatively affect desired behaviors which, in turn, make dogs less likely to be adopted. I have already found multiple articles that talk about how the breed and genetic makeup of dogs only account for a small percentage of dog behavior, so it will be interesting to see what scholars think contributes most. Dog's welfare severely declines when they do not reach the desired behavior patterns and they get left in tough living conditions, they miss out on job opportunities (like working for Guide Dogs), and they even end up becoming "high risk" animals that are isolated or put down.
Comments