Advancing through our research project

At the start of the week, we were given journals and articles to read through as part of our literature review. Some were a bit challenging to understand, especially the one revolving around critical race theory (CRT), but by taking my time and writing down notes, I was able to grasp a good understanding of what the author was trying to say. I wrote down summaries to check my comprehension and discussed the main ideas with one of my teammates who was also trying to understand the journal centered on CRT. Some of the themes I took away from reading the texts include the hindering effect of homophily on social capital and the sense of empowerment gained from the acknowledgement of the backgrounds and strengths of people of color. Overall, going through the literature review made it clear to me as to why we’re working towards designing a 3D game with a bilingual interface meant to help and encourage first-generation students on their journey to postsecondary education.

This week’s Craft of Research had my teammates and I work through creating a problem statement for our project. Similarly to reading through the literature review, writing down a problem statement helped me clearly understand what our project is about and what it intends to accomplish while connecting it to our target audience and the scenario they find themselves in. My team and I also played through a Facebook game called Mission: Admission that was created to improve a student’s college-going efficacy and their knowledge on how to build a strong college application. We discussed our likes, dislikes, and suggestions for improvements with each other and eventually with our grad student mentors. I found the experience to be very insightful as it helped me to start thinking about how we are going to create our 3D game. To further address this area, we’ll start learning more about game mechanics and possibly play some games to gain inspiration for our game’s design. By the way, if you want to gain a general idea of our research project, Curtis’s post “Week 2 – C++” does a great job of providing a detailed overview of what the project is, its goals, and some of the main steps to be taken.

Besides working through the research project, we’ve also all done some pretty fun activities. I went to an escape room for the first time, and it was cool how the shelves were secret doors. I can’t wait to go to an escape room again, especially with my cousins. The next day some of us volunteered to help at a bike shop organized by We-Cycle. Tim and I worked through removing bike pedals. I admire how Tim likes to take charge and push himself to accomplish something; some of those pedals were extremely difficult to remove due to rust. After helping out, we were all rewarded with bikes for the summer. I can’t believe I’ve actually been finding the confidence to ride my bike to the office and sometimes even to the dining hall all on my own, but I guess Curtis is right: riding a bike through campus is pretty enjoyable. On Tuesday we had a movie night and watched The Empire Strikes Back. I didn’t really say anything at the time except to my roommate Ayman, but I guess I might as well write here that I’m also a big Star Wars fan and, like Amy, I find the prequels (they exist to me) to have a place in the franchise with Revenge of the Sith being one of my favorites. Oh, we also did yoga on Thursday. That was interesting and relaxing I must admit (I’m glad I found a spot at the back though).