Reflections

                  Everyone has experienced at one time or another going to something they were thrilled about or having to completed it because it has to be done. Well, that was mostly how I felt about taking my first advanced leadership class for my master's. I was already knee deep in another class and when starting a new one, I thought I would have enough free time to get two classes done at once.

                 I browsed the course materials on the day before the first day of class, and saw a lot of assignments and thought this is a lot. Then after reading the course content I thought to myself, “lot of stuff due on the first week”, “what am I doing”, and “the professor seems strict”. Then upon viewing the professors videos my perception changed to“Well, if I just take one step at a time” and “the professor seems sincere”. I had to take a day to think about dropping the class and decided to stick with it. 

                 Throughout the course, something I might have done differently would be to explore future reading suggestions from each module. I have a desire to read more and going to my local library but time seems very short when life happens around you. When you want to do something you will make time for it, and during this class I had to chose to give enough time to the assignments. 

                The instructor provided additional support through comments and general discussion feedback. I see why some people major in English, for one writing is power. I would struggle with auto-correct all the time, and occasionally turned to pen and paper. I greatly appreciated the instructor's encouragement and his substantial feedback to me each week to improve. I revised some of my work because after reviewing the comments and my work I saw my errors and wanted to clarify in case I would need to reference in the future. 

                 One topic I thought was very relevant was the SEE-I. There were no irrelevant topics because they all connected at the end. One thing I didn’t like doing was the annotated bibliography at first, and kept messing up the format.  It was by coincidence during the overlap of the two classes, I was ask for  annotated bibliography in the same week, and received two completely different versions as an example. After learning this technique for the first time, I still don’t know what the correct format is but I’m glad to know about it. 

              I could use more clarity in all aspects of my life because I’m always thinking (and in my head) I don’t expect to explain myself.  One thing I do a lot at work is explaining myself,  sometimes too much, and I think it boils down to work ethic. Some people just clock in and clock out, and don’t see the value in looking closer into things that do not impact their job (or some may say the Bigger Picture). Similar to reason of why some people don’t vote in local elections, they don’t see the direct impact on themselves. I'm currently enrolled in a voluntary class on aviation accidents, and they discussed the swiss cheese model of accident crashes and showed the image below. Is a good image what I think of when I say people don’t often go beyond the surface.

                 This class goes beyond the surface. It’s not about the grades or just finishing the class, you spend time on concepts to be a fair-minded thinker. It's okay to see the Bigger Picture but first focusing on how you see the picture and expand from there. If you don't focus on growing your knowledge base, all I have to say is "Where is Waldo?". Some excitement or frustration you have when finding "Waldo", will be what you mentally battle lacking critical thinking techniques.

                 I do believe the hardest part of this class is the beginning. I tell you I couldn’t get past the first chapter I had to read the first 5 pages 3 times to understand what I was readings. I thought its downhill from here I still have a chance to drop, but it was more up hill for me.

                 I looked to some of my leaders to embrace some of these concepts in my presents, and sometimes I was putting them to the test and they didn’t pass. I thought why not I embrace them and apply. I started using some critical thinking traits and virtues in my conservations, and developed two presentations after learning about good presentation design. I got feedback from one that it was a great presentation, which was merely a review of what most already know. 

            Vincenzi, D. A. (2016, May 19). The Basics of MOOCs[Webinar]. Emery

             Riddle Webinar Series. Retrieved from

            http://www.worldwide.erau.edu/index.html

Presentation Design Culture

A design is a plan to produce a vision or document actions. Presentations are designed to relate the speaker and the audience to the discussion. Per the readings this week, one principle in graphic design of presentations I believe is lacking in most professional presentations is Proximity. Too much information, too close together that is not relevant. At work, presentations are mostly used to communicate a problem. More conversation and time spend on one slide occurs due to the fact the problem is not well understood even though it's displayed.

Captions are rarely used on images because they may or may not relate to the existing text. Visuals are nice to have but not necessary all the time when it comes to a presentation. Other principles on presentation noted by Garr Reynolds (2008) were alignment, repetition, and contrast (pp 155-157). 

Alignment is good to thing for those not familiar to comprehend the presentation and give it an appealing look. Going for a more sophisticated look does not mean apply Times New Romans font everywhere but to think on the elements to make visual connection. 

One of the “20 great examples of Powerpoint”, the powerpoint titled “ You don’t suck at Powerpoint,”  by Jesse Desjardins, talked about two shortcuts for great powerpoint design emphasizing use of “beautiful fonts” and dumping others. Most being the default fonts, such as Comic sans, Courier new, Times new roman, Arial, Tahoma, etc (slide 33). I’ve been meaning to draft a presentation soon, and will ignore some of these fonts.  It appears as though Desjardin's powerpoint didn't need a speaker, it spoke the the audience with the use of graphics and words. Sometimes the little things are just important as the major things like the content of the presentation. 

I believe if I have a conversation with the current leadership at work, giving them tips on designing a good powerpoint, they would say “You’re kidding right, it's not that big of a deal”. A lot of what they already know about presentations has been communicated through properly marking documents (export/import) not how to visually organize or present them. There are official templates which already have too much information on the slides, something that would have to be discussed with the group that designs it. I wonder if they can all just read organizational & preparation tips to start with the end in mind and scratching ideas doesn't mean to spend money and time on making real life graphics distracting the audience from the speakers content already. 

When delivering information to the audience ,its is always, as described by Reynolds (2008) good to make eye contact (p.4), a good tip even in daily conversations. Reynolds (2008) had great tips on organization & preparation, powerpoint slides and delivery tips, after highlighting the current state of powerpoint presentation culture and effective use of multimedia (p. 1). Reynolds (2008) highlighted important features of human information processing system relevant for powerpoint users, dual-channels (visual and verbal), limited capacity (storing information), and active processing (people understand the presented material, organize it in coherent mental structure, and integrate it with prior knowledge (p.1)

It easy to dismiss things due to the fact that speakers believe they are already bad at like for me, I’m not a good storyteller. For example, when someone asked me about an incident and to describe what happens, depending on how much I seemed to be impacted by it, if I remember only a portion I try to tell a portion and give my opinion. I do notice when I do this I lose the interest of folks, you can see it in the body language, they start looking around or mention its okay I will ask such and such. I get discouraged when I did see that good presentations include stories in the readings but the best way to turn it around is to use my strengths of relating to people. After viewing a webinar on “Writing Effective Emails, Reports and Messages”, my confidence was stroked to embrace some of the tips in from the reading such as, its about your audience, reducing text on your slide, and I’m already good about not reading the text on the slide only when I’m caught off guard or forget something. From the webinar, my notes were to tell’em, tell’em what your going to tell and tell’em what you told them. 

We are in a presentation culture,were many believe a presentation is a direct reflection of the presenter.  Most don't remember the presentation but what the presenter was doing and complement them.  How we break away from that culture is to put emphasizes on tips and things to do, much like writing an effective resume. As an individual, I can try to apply these tips along with delivery tips to spark a small movement within my scope of influence. I plan to avoid staying in one place, take things slow and try to use a remote for the presentation.  I hope for some of my future presentation to be sophisticated using these tools to blend images with the content to make a good presentation similar to the example from the reading. And sometimes it's not about knowing all the features in tool to contrast, it goes back to putting ideas on paper and knowing how to organize them wisely for the audience to understand and enjoy. Presentations should be developed for enjoyment. 

Make, Dr. J  (2016, May 12). Writing Effective Emails, 

Reports and Messages [Webinar]. Emery Riddle Webinar Series. Retrieved 

from http://www.worldwide.erau.edu/index.html

Reynolds, G. (n.d.). Presentation Zen. How to Design & Deliver Presentations Like a Pro. Retrieved from http://www.garrreynolds.com/Presentation/pdf/presentation_tips.pdf

Reynolds, G (2008). The Big Four: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity. Retrieved from http://www.presentationzen.com/chapter6_spread.pdf

Quantitative Research

Quantitative research involves theories and empirical research. Scientific research consists of a dialogue between theory and empirism (Mamia, n.d). Descriptive research on what exist and explanatory research on why are types of research conducted by social scientist (Mamia, n.d). Often at work, management ask for ways to quantify work to establish performance measures. Expressing work in numeric form is always a plus for leadership beyond management to justify changes and problems that require attention.

To express something numerically, I naturally think of an equation or formula, with variables. In quantitative research, variables are observable and measurable characteristic of an observation unit, such as individual, group, event, etc (Mamia, n.d). Quantitative research incorporates a methodological process stating with an ideas, then formulating a problem, research questions and research design planning, etc. In many classes starting with high school chemistry, statistics and college work design classes, designed several assignments that require data collecting, understanding trends shown below and analyzing data that results in new research discoveries or aligns with existing research finding new characteristics using statistical analysis. I like to believe all quantitative research starts with exploring problems found in previous research, but its more apparent in the work environment I’m currently apart of and more accepting to reinvent the wheel.

Data Trends 

When I say reinvent the wheel, I mean to start from scratch when some scholars such as Baker (2012) would agree that technologies from one research may aid another’s research. In Baker’s (2012) article, it’s stated there is a growing assumption among researchers that data and computing resources should be readily reused, repurposed and extend by other scientists (p. 41). I’m not a scientist but in my experience I don’t see this same assumption growing among leaders in large corporations because they working groups, often in silos, remaining “insiders” to an issue that exclusively impacts their teams. I recently reached out a few “insiders” after hearing about a job performance measuring tool they use frequently. This sparked the interest of my management, more so they wanted to have their own tool. Only attracted to the glitter and glamour, there was no attempt to reason through criteria currently used in the measuring tool to repurpose for another team. Management proceed to call upon those to help develop a new tool for the team, and unfortunately I wasn’t apart of the “dream team”.

For personal awareness, I reached out to the creator to ask them about the tool and discovered they were about to make a drastic shift into a new tool unfamiliar to those within our regional location. I reached out to a few members of the “dream team” and received blank stares so I thought to pursue my discussion with the creator to see if someone from my team can sit in to observe, which the creator has mentioned inviting me but still has to send out the invite. The creator mentioned this project is funded by the information technology (IT) team for their group. For this particular situation, it will be useful to apply quantitative methods to repurpose existing criteria from the soon to be old tool and refine the criteria to be used in new tool to assist our group. At the moment, the manager insist on creating new criteria but without understanding how the existing data for the other group is used. I plan to continue learning how to incorporate quantitative research methods and design in to my current job role. This would likely require face to face interviews, and then statistical analysis against the existing criteria. 

Baker, M. (2012). Quantitative data: Learning to share. Nature Methods, 9(1), 39-41. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/10.1038/nmeth.1815

Mamia, T. (n.d). Quantitative Research Methods [PowerPoint slides]. PDF File