Open day

My place of work had an open day on 20 October 2012. I was shock that in this open day, the students and their parents were only interested in their chosen subject. They weren’t really interested in what the college had to offer. The college has a lot of enrichment programmes and even hired for the first time ever this year someone who will organise and arrange the enrichment programme. For the day, there was only about 5 or so interest in the enrichment and social aspect side of the college. At the moment the focus was on the academic aspect side of the college.

Also what amazed me was the fact that Performing Arts programmes had very little interest. I thought that this department would be very busy and packed with potential students and their parents but it only had about two to three interested students/parents per tour where as Social Studies and Childcare department were over flowing with potential students and parents. Colleagues’ even made comment about how popular this was. I really don’t know why this was and I couldn’t investigate this further because I was working with the enrichment/ youth worker since my role and work relates very closely to this area. I was also dealing and promoting finance and counselling. My guess and suggestion might be because of the university fees raise and credit crunch that young people are thinking ahead of their future and want a secure jobs. These sectors will offer them a secure job and in some case free education after their college life. I will have to investigate this further and possibly have an interview with the teacher who was at the opening day and see their views and thoughts.   

Getting reply to interview request

Is it me or is it hard to get a reply (any form of reply) to an interview you have requested.

I first contacted (by phone) all the schools and institutions (colleges) I’ve been interested in, to see if it was possible to have an interview with some of (Performing Arts) their staff and students. The told me it was ok and that I’ll need email conformation and consent forms (for the schools). I did this and email them everything. One professional even gave me the green light but only with emails (I felt uncomfortable with this because it is more like a questionnaire and also this will mean that I will have to refer to the same questions and can’t really manoeuvre) but I agreed and talked to my advisor, Adesola about it. She told me I will have to accommodate to this professional’s wishes and may need a follow up. I tried my best to limit any follow up by re designing the questions. I then emailed her a confirmation email with the questions. I still haven’t had any reply, I did say to her that she can email me her answer till the end of November but I expected a reply to say that she received the email/questions, or she can’t do it or will do it later. I haven’t received anything.

I can’t go to these schools or institutions because I just started a new full time job at a college and my hours are the same hours as these schools/institutions. Plus it is difficult for me to do it before or after work as my travel to work is minimum of one hour (with out the busy period traffic).

I just wanted to know if any one is facing this same situation and what are your solutions. One of mine is that I am going to try local stage schools for the students/parents to see if they will do the interview. With the professionals, I don’t know yet. I’ll try my work to see if the head of Performing Arts/Drama will do the interview. I am really worried since I feel like I am way behind. I really don't want to rush this as this work is due at the beginning of January and is worth about 50% of our overall mark.   

Campus Session 2 Module 3

Wednesday 31 October 2012 Campus Session was very interesting. We discussed a lot of things and issues that can help us with our inquiry. I’m just going to explain two things I found really helpful in tackling the inquiry.

The first helpful advice that came from the inquiry is to consider all your literature as a close group of friends who all have different concepts, ideology and theories about your particular inquiry. Their ideas and theories count because it will help to give the inquiry a more 3D and a more rounded form. Also it will help you to analyse the inquiry in more depth and add more shadows and shades. Just as you will refer to a friends concept you can also refer to these literature concept; for example, if your inquiry is about what car manufacturer is the best. When you want to argue your point, we generally refer to what our friends say. If Johnny thinks that BMW are good because it has stronger engine or Bob says that Ferrier as great because it is fast, we will use these thought and concept as a way to strengthen our point or our findings. It is the same when we are using these literatures. We use it to try and explain our findings and how these concepts compare to our findings.

The second helpful advice is to tell a friend our inquiry using the different headlines. If our friends explains our inquiry back to us and understand it then it is more likely that the inquiry is very clear and it can be very clear to the generally public because we really are write this inquiry for the generally public.