Alys May-James BA Professional Practice Blog

This week I attended 2 skype calls with other students. The first one was an all module discussion group, and the second had a module 2 focus. It was good to be able to connect with other students and listen to their thoughts on their work and the different ideas they have had. This week I have had to isolate due to a positive COVID-19 case at work, and so these skype calls came at a really good time for me. It reminded me of the importance of community and having contact with people- even if it is through a screen. This links to the concept of Affiliation which looks at how people benefit from forming close connections with others. Crisp and Turner (2007) explain affiliation as ‘a network of support that will help us when we are in need,’ (p. 266). I feel that the connections we make are so important at the moment, especially with what is happening in the world. These skype calls are an important place to make space for each other and to listen to what others have to say. The skype...

I know there are lots of different ways to make a Gantt Chart, but I found this video really helpful. It takes you through a step by step version of what to do.  Let me know if you found this helpful!  Bibliography  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z76i2SOaYy4&t=705s

This week I joined a discussion skype about interviews with other module 2 and 3 students. It was a good opportunity to see the perspectives of interviews from the different modules. Something that I found interesting from this session is that it isn’t about getting an answer. We can plan our inquiry into the ground but the reality is, we don’t know what we are going to find and what data we will collect. We do not have control over everything. This means that some of the thoughts we had planned may not work for the data we received… and that is ok. Things change, we don’t always have control and that is ok. What this does, is give us an opportunity to look at ourselves and question why we thought certain things, why did we make those assumptions or have that bias? It gives us a way to learn more about ourselves and to push our own boundaries. Qualitative data is very different from quantitative data regarding what information is collected. With qualitative data the researcher is ...

Recently I watched The Social Dilemma. It is a documentary and drama about social media and the impact it has on us as a society. It explores how some of the people who were involved in developing and creating various social media platforms, have decided to leave their jobs, the industry or speak out about the ethical issues they felt arose whilst working for these companies. ‘Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse’  Sophocles The people that were interviewed spoke of how they didn’t realise or think about the consequences that social media would have. When they started out, it was very focused on the good and positive that these platforms created- i.e. being able to contact relatives who lived miles away. It seems that less thought was given to the negative impacts and implications. So, without looking at the ethical considerations, they were not fully prepared for the future. I found the actual content of the documentary quite worrying. Algorithms have been...