Overview
The purpose of this assignment is: a) To practice collecting qualitative types of data b) To practice fully developing and elaborating field notes from observation. c) To gather qualitative evidence related to your research topic or setting.
OBSERVATIONAL METHOD: You will pick a location to observe. Your location and observations should be chosen because you think they will help you understand your topic, site or subjects. Observe it for 90 minutes (all at once or in three 30-minute blocks). Prior to observing the location, you need to think specifically about what aspect of the setting or interaction you will observe. What type of site will best help you understand your topic? While observing, take jotted notes describing exactly what you observed. Refer to the lecture notes and texts for the principles of taking good field notes; you should follow these guidelines to earn full credit for the assignment. I will be evaluating the notes themselves for how rich and extensive they are and how you’ve managed to generate (and distinguish between) descriptive and interpretive material.
You must have at least TWO pages of (single spaced) field notes.
For this semester, my group will be studying the experiences of students of color attending San Diego State University. We aim to examine how students of color experience campus life and whether SDSU‘s resources help them navigate challenges like belonging, discrimination and support. While SDSU promotes diversity, some students encounter challenges like racism and microaggression. Other students find strong support systems that enrich their college experiences. By researching how students of color interact with SDSU‘S campus resources and support systems, we can highlight their strengths and areas for improvement to better serve students of color. You will use this to base your obervations and notes off of.
For this assignment you will use the san diego state libarary as your observation site. You won't actually be able to observe it but you can make up all of the information that you want. You can use whatever information you can find online to make it sound believable but you will pretty much just make up the observation from your own thoughts.