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Contract and Timing

 

As the week before spring break tends to go, it was a bit stressful. Joe and I had clashing schedules the weekend of writing the contract, which made it hard for us to meet up and collaborate in person. We ended up using out trusty Google Docs to share the document and edit it when we could. However, for this contract, it ended up being Joe who was the star of the show. We worked together to type up an intro, but after that, he was the one to come up with most of the first rough draft. From there, I was able to edit it and ensure that the wording was representative of what we wanted to say.

 

While writing this contract, I came to a couple realizations. First of all, unlike a typical contract of this nature, we did need to create a simplified version to either explain or to give in paper form to the interviewee. While our interviewees are able to speak conversational English, a contract like this is likely too advanced for them. We want to ensure that they understand fully what we are doing.

 

In addition, I am excited to use the tools that we hope to use, such as Timeline and VideoPro. Since we must still do some research, we are unsure what information exactly we will have on our website, making it hard to know exactly how we will use our tools and organize them well on our webpage. However, we are hoping to create a video intro for our page that describes what the project is. After watching countless documentary-like videos on YouTube and social media, I am very excited to create one with Joe. However, our main question is what are we going to put into it.

 

Finally, I should say something about what happened this past meeting at our community coordination meeting. We talked with a group called Enactus who is hoping to create an accessible community page to post dates and useful information regarding the immigrant community. As a result, the website we are creating will not serve as a community website in this aspect. However, we will still share it with community members at these community meetings. In addition, the previous group’s website and our website will be linked to the main webpage in order to inform the public on the academic and personal sides of the situation.

 

Most of our project right now is based on setting up the interviews once we get the website approved. Once we are able to do that and do a bit more research, I feel that we will gain more and more of an idea of what our website will look like. I know that the final dates are necessary to keep us on track, but at this point, I trust that Joe and I will make appropriate progress. I also feel that it is important to focus on the information more so than the deadline. As we do more and more research, I think we will also have a more realistic idea of how much we can do well in a given period of time. No matter what happens, I’ll keep you updated!

Timeline of the Project: Past and Ahead

6 thoughts on “Contract and Timing

  1. That’s great that you have contacted a community representative that can help move along the project. It is definitely difficult to put into writing what you will include in your website before you get a chance to even start the interviews (which will dictate a lot of what you decide to include). You mentioned that your community will likely speak conversational English, which will help when reading the contract. Have you considered drafting a contract in their native language in order to ensure there are no language barriers when communicating your plans/intentions?

    1. Sorry for not replying sooner; my wifi was not as reliable as I had hoped

      As for the linguistic nature of our population, I would love to draft the contract into their native language, but there are a few problems. First of all, the most common language that they speak is French (they also speak langauages like Lingala, Kikongo, Tshiluba, etc.), and although I know some French, I am definetely not fluent enough to create a contract of this level. That might cause even more confusion. Also, at this point, it’s difficult to ask anyone to translate since there are already so many other translation needs in the community that have higher priority than this project. Good questions!

  2. It seems that you and Joe are having similar challenges as Sarah and I! We also have clashing schedules. I am glad that you all were able to go over that kink and continue. It seems you all have made significant progress. I can not wait to see the finished product!

    1. So glad to know that we aren’t the only one’s struggling in that area! What are you guys doing to work around that issue?

  3. I apologize that my comment is almost a week late. While certainly not an academically acceptable excuse, I did enjoy a spring break vacation in the sun without any school work…

    Anyway, I completely understand having scheduling/communication difficulties while working on the project. I suppose that is the most challenging nature of group projects. Now that spring break is over, hopefully you find it easier to line up your schedule with your partner’s (or vice versa)!

    Further, I have also had the same revelation about the language used while writing our contract. It has been brought to my attention that I have been trained to write in a rather formal, academic writing style, of which I did not quite realize. I had a hard time working through the contract to change some of the word choice and sentence structure used. All in all, it was an important revelation to make, both for the purposes of this project and future literary audiences.

    1. Glad to hear you had a good spring break! Hopefully, now everyone’s schedules will be a bit more aligned. Also I agree that the writing portion is challenging. I feel like this is a very academic project, but where do you draw the line between academia and accessibility?

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