Entry 9
Date of Entry: February 16, 2018
Section: Taking Action
ATLs: In this process journal I address communication and self-management skills. I will display how I interacted with experts and people in the IICS community to receive constructive criticism on my product that let me reflect on and improve it.
Subject: This entry is about the feedback I received on my project to ensure that it fulfilled the requirements listed in the success specifications.
Content: According to the success criteria from my planning stage, there were certain experts and other people I needed to reach out to in order to test whether my products were successful and approved.
1. Expert feedback
There were two experts in my project who needed to help me in different areas.
Video Expert: The first expert for my project was Mr. Carlson, the education technology coordinator at IICS. Mr. Carlson helped determine if the editing, resolution, audio, and general quality of my videos were sufficient. For the rubric sheets given to Mr. Carlson, the written feedback is me writing the spoken feedback he gave to me when he first watched the videos. The way that he wanted to grade the rubrics was that he would give a grade on my rubric for the most improved form of the videos. He thought it would be better to determine the quality of the video after I applied his feedback.
Date of Entry: February 16, 2018
Section: Taking Action
ATLs: In this process journal I address communication and self-management skills. I will display how I interacted with experts and people in the IICS community to receive constructive criticism on my product that let me reflect on and improve it.
Subject: This entry is about the feedback I received on my project to ensure that it fulfilled the requirements listed in the success specifications.
Content: According to the success criteria from my planning stage, there were certain experts and other people I needed to reach out to in order to test whether my products were successful and approved.
1. Expert feedback
There were two experts in my project who needed to help me in different areas.
Video Expert: The first expert for my project was Mr. Carlson, the education technology coordinator at IICS. Mr. Carlson helped determine if the editing, resolution, audio, and general quality of my videos were sufficient. For the rubric sheets given to Mr. Carlson, the written feedback is me writing the spoken feedback he gave to me when he first watched the videos. The way that he wanted to grade the rubrics was that he would give a grade on my rubric for the most improved form of the videos. He thought it would be better to determine the quality of the video after I applied his feedback.
Vlog Improvements: Mr. Carlson’s main recommendations for improvement on my vlogs was to use background music more effectively throughout the video. While I did initially have background music in my vlogs, it was either insufficient or choppy. I went back and edited this issue by adding additional background music in some part, and also fading it in and out whenever it starts and stops. He also recommended that I learn about the end screen feature on YouTube and use its elements once I uploaded my vlogs. Some elements include subscribe buttons, links to other videos, and simple annotations.
Tutorial & documentary feedback: The main area of feedback for my tutorial and documentary was to improve the audio quality. In my first draft of these videos, Mr. Carlson said that the audio quality ranked at about a 2 out of 4 only. His recommendation for improving this issue was to either use a school microphone or purchase my own in order to re-record my voiceovers with better audio quality. I ended up purchasing my own microphone. For the tutorials he gave my final drafts a 3, since the audio was occasionally too loud or too low despite the microphone. However, he found my sound editing for the documentary a lot better.
Swim Expert: My second expert was Merve Senol, a swim coach for the Turkish National Team and also the head coach of my club, ITÜ. Having her determine the validity of my tutorials was a follow-up to my interview with her during the investigation stage. I gave her a simple rubric (in Turkish) that determined whether the video examples I gave for each stroke were correct. So that she could determine the validity of the narration, I had to give her a Turkish transcript, since the video was narrated in English.
Improvements after meeting with advisor: My coach said that improvements only needed to be done for the butterfly and backstroke. In the butterfly, I had to refilm the shots where I focused on the dolphin kick. I made a mistake in the kick as one foot would occasionally kick slightly out of sync; this should not happen in the butterfly. In the backstroke, my mistakes were that my shoulders were too low in the water and my shoulder rotation was insufficient. Sadly, I never had the oppurtunity to film in an empty pool again.
Conclusion: If I revise my success specification set for the expert feedbacks, I can conclude that my work fulfilled the criteria and was successful. Criteria 4 and 5, which demanded for me to receive an average higher than 9.0 on the rubric from Mr. Carlson, were accomplished in my final drafts of the video. With the simple changes I made after Mr. Carlson’s feedback, my vlogs and documentary scored 12.0 out of 12,0 and my tutorials scored 11.0. That means that the audio and visual quality of my videos were sufficient and that cinematographic elements were incorporation effectively. Criteria 6, which required me to receive at least 3 points out of 4 from my coach for the tutorial of each stroke, also succeeded, as I scored a 3, 3.5, and two 4s.
Conclusion: If I revise my success specification set for the expert feedbacks, I can conclude that my work fulfilled the criteria and was successful. Criteria 4 and 5, which demanded for me to receive an average higher than 9.0 on the rubric from Mr. Carlson, were accomplished in my final drafts of the video. With the simple changes I made after Mr. Carlson’s feedback, my vlogs and documentary scored 12.0 out of 12,0 and my tutorials scored 11.0. That means that the audio and visual quality of my videos were sufficient and that cinematographic elements were incorporation effectively. Criteria 6, which required me to receive at least 3 points out of 4 from my coach for the tutorial of each stroke, also succeeded, as I scored a 3, 3.5, and two 4s.
2. Community and Target Audience Feedback
The specific surveys and rubrics I provided to the IICS community and target audience included the vlog survey, the project-effectiveness rubric, and the food taste survey.
For my vlogs, the target audience was primarily teenagers, so I had a panel of four students answer my survey. I also needed two adults to give feedback because I was going to present my vlogs to adults as well at the Personal Project exhibition. For the vlog, the main feedback I received was to implement background music better and make transitions shorter. In the end, I succeeded as the panel scored the vlogs over 7.0/10.0 in terms of how interesting and entertaining they were.
For my vlogs, the target audience was primarily teenagers, so I had a panel of four students answer my survey. I also needed two adults to give feedback because I was going to present my vlogs to adults as well at the Personal Project exhibition. For the vlog, the main feedback I received was to implement background music better and make transitions shorter. In the end, I succeeded as the panel scored the vlogs over 7.0/10.0 in terms of how interesting and entertaining they were.
For the project-effectiveness rubric, I requested a focus group of three students to determine whether my videos and website fulfilled my goal of encouraging a healthy lifestyle for students and showing its connection to self-efficacy. According to the feedback, the single most important change I had to make was to change the format of my website from single-page to multi-page for better navigation. I made this improvement, and in the end, I scored over 9.0/12.0 on all three rubrics, indicating that I succeeded in communicating my goal according to my success specifications.
Lastly, I asked two adults and two students to answer my food survey because my target audience was the general public. For each dish, I got one student and one adult to respond. For my survey with Mr. Benard, it was split up with the other P.E. teacher, Mrs. Ramirez, because Mr. Benard could not consume lactose or gluten. Generally, the food surveys did not recommend many improvement besides to add more seasoning to the savory dishes or to make the oatmeal yogurt more fluid. Ultimately, I scored over 7 in the survey for every dish, which meant that all dishes succeeded the success criteria.
Lastly, I asked two adults and two students to answer my food survey because my target audience was the general public. For each dish, I got one student and one adult to respond. For my survey with Mr. Benard, it was split up with the other P.E. teacher, Mrs. Ramirez, because Mr. Benard could not consume lactose or gluten. Generally, the food surveys did not recommend many improvement besides to add more seasoning to the savory dishes or to make the oatmeal yogurt more fluid. Ultimately, I scored over 7 in the survey for every dish, which meant that all dishes succeeded the success criteria.