Jacob Fies
Rhode Island Nature Conservancy Final Project
Follow this link to find the complete set of deliverables generated for the Rhode Island Nature Conservancy.
Personal Reflective Introduction:
Tim Mooney, the Marketing and Communications Manager for the Rhode Island Nature Conservancy, visited our class on 2/26/18. During this visit, he introduced a potential project, in which a group of students would generate a set of deliverables for the RI Nature Conservancy to be used on their newly renovated website. During Tim’s visit, I was initially interested in his proposed project because it would give me the opportunity to go out and explore some of the areas in Rhode Island that I had never been before. Hiking and trail running have always been some things that I enjoyed, so this specific project seemed to be perfect for me. I found out shortly after Tim left that there were more students in class that felt the exact same way as me, so we formed a small four-person group to tackle this project. After his visit, we (Ava Mastrostefano, Ethan Jordan, Jacob Fies, and Zachary Wagner) came together as a group and began the process of figuring out what information we wanted to generate for the Conservancy and in what form we wanted it to take.
Eventually, after going through the process of figuring out what was possible and practical for us to do, we landed on generating site descriptions for four preserves located near Roger Williams. From here we wrote up a proposal that outlined what we would be delivering to Tim, the preserves we thought would be good to visit, and a rough time frame for which we would be finishing sections of our project. While we had some preserves, we thought would be good to visit, we wanted input from Tim so that we were as helpful and productive as possible. After communicating with Tim on which preserves were in the most need for new site descriptions, the four sites chosen were: Pocasset Ridge, Whitehead Preserve, Carter Preserve, and the Aust Family at Lime Rock Preserve. We then had to decide who would visit which preserves. This decision turned out pretty simple, and the decisions were made based on who had car access and the time to visit the further preserves, while those who didn’t have cars, or the time would go to the closer ones. We ended up with Ethan visiting Pocasset, Zach visiting Whitehead, Jacob visiting Carter, and Ava visiting the Aust Family Preserve at Lime Rock. While we each had our own strategy while visiting our preserve the general thought was we would take pictures and make notes on the different kinds of plants and animals you could see while these, and use this information, along with other research, to generate our site descriptions.
When visiting the Francis C. Carter Preserve, I arrived at the entrance off of Old Mill Road. I briefly stopped upon leaving my car to look over some of the wildlife I could possibly come across, as it was outlined on a large wooden sign near the entrance. From there I ventured down a trail loop that consisted of the: Grassland Loop, Grassland Connector, and Narragansett Loop trails. During this trail loop, I was able to experience a sample of each ecosystem present within the preserve. At each location I made a point to note what kinds of flora and fauna might be seen while visiting the preserve. Additionally, I made a point to photograph anything I found particularly interesting, so that I could remind myself of the experience for the writing process. The final thing I ensured to make note of was the different accessibility/recreation level of the different trails I encountered. All these together, I had hoped would give me a good sense of not only what people may see on a hike, but also the physical requirements needed to traverse the preserve.
Once I had visited my preserve, I realized that I was going to need additionally information to make my site description as complete as possible. I pondered the best way to collect the information that I needed and realized that taking some notes from the existing Rhode Island Nature Conservancy website was probably my best bet. Once there I found the Carter Preserve’s page and realized that it was quite outdated (as was to be expected given the nature of our project). With this in mind, in addition to some general information on the preserve that I pulled form the website, I decided that the new description should be all encompassing of what the Carter preserve can offer its visitors. The next thing to consider what format our overall project was going to take.
When considering what format our project should take, we consulted the Washington State Nature Conservancy website, as directed by Tim Mooney. This site is going to be the basis by which the new Rhode Island website will be built. We additionally did some research regarding the setup of the Washington Website, specifically the “Yellow Island” page, to gain some deeper insight into how our project should be formatted. When analyzing the site, the first thing we noticed was how concise and packed with information each sentence was. They used each and every sentence at their disposal and never settled for filler sentences. Additionally, we began to identify techniques they used while writing, as outlined by Montgomery in Chapter 19 of “The Chicago Guide to Communicating Science”. The two main techniques used were a strong introduction sentence or paragraph and sticking with simple language. These two techniques helped to introduce the Preserve to the public, and keep them interested with simple, jargon free, writing. With this in mind we formatted our deliverables to match this style so that it would be as close to the final product as possible. Tim additionally confirmed out choices by stating that the use of simple language is the best approach, as it would keep from boring the reader. Tim also gave us the idea of writing our descriptions so that the sites would seem appealing to people of all physical ability, as well as interest level. He shared with us that the Nature Conservancy wants all people to be able to enjoy the preserves, not just those with a background in hiking and physical activities.
Taking what Tim shared with us into consideration we began to write out our final deliverables and a general outline of what we did to share with Tim. This process took quite some time and the project itself went through various iterations. The very first draft of our project can still be found here. As expected, this draft received a Red Light (go here to see what this means) from our teacher which means it still needed heavy editing and drafting. The main piece of feedback we received on the first draft was that it did not appear as one cohesive project, and it was hard to follow in general. With this in mind we shifted to a format that was meant to be easy to follow and had more of a memo feel to it. Additionally, we decided on a single layout for our deliverables (as outlined above) so that they would appear as they would on a website. The final project came together, in my opinion atleast, as one well written and cohesive deliverable that we hope Tim will find complete and up to his expectations. The final project can be found linked above. Going along with this project is a presentation consisting of our group outlining exactly what we did, how we did it, and why we did what we did to help shed some light onto the whole process.
When considering which student learning outcomes were most important for this project, I landed on a couple specific ones. The first student learning outcomes I found most relevant is “Discourse Community Knowledge”. I found this one important for our project due to the need to understand fully the expectations and standards associated with a project done for a third party. While it is still important to understand the standard and expectations of your teacher when writing a normal paper for a class, this understand becomes exponentially more important when you are doing work directly for a party not associated with your class at all. You need to understand what their company wants, what your direct contact wants, as well as what their audience wants. This can be a lot to keep track of while developing a large project like this, but with the help of our teacher and his feedback I believe he have been able to keep these expectations and standards in mind and achieved this learning outcome. The second student learning outcome that I found important during this project was “Metacognitive Knowledge”. For this project we attempted to as thoughtful and reflective as possible regarding what was the most essentially information to incorporate into the final draft. This affected all aspects of the project including: the site descriptions, the outline of our process’, and even our blog posts. With four people working both independently and together, it was important to all be on the same page with what we wanted to add, making it necessary to determine what was important and what added to the scientific discourse and what did not. This helped us form our decisions on excluding excess scientific jargon, overly wordy description, etc. These two student learning outcomes were the most essentially, in my opinion, and helped us develop our final project to the best of our abilities.
Eventually, after going through the process of figuring out what was possible and practical for us to do, we landed on generating site descriptions for four preserves located near Roger Williams. From here we wrote up a proposal that outlined what we would be delivering to Tim, the preserves we thought would be good to visit, and a rough time frame for which we would be finishing sections of our project. While we had some preserves, we thought would be good to visit, we wanted input from Tim so that we were as helpful and productive as possible. After communicating with Tim on which preserves were in the most need for new site descriptions, the four sites chosen were: Pocasset Ridge, Whitehead Preserve, Carter Preserve, and the Aust Family at Lime Rock Preserve. We then had to decide who would visit which preserves. This decision turned out pretty simple, and the decisions were made based on who had car access and the time to visit the further preserves, while those who didn’t have cars, or the time would go to the closer ones. We ended up with Ethan visiting Pocasset, Zach visiting Whitehead, Jacob visiting Carter, and Ava visiting the Aust Family Preserve at Lime Rock. While we each had our own strategy while visiting our preserve the general thought was we would take pictures and make notes on the different kinds of plants and animals you could see while these, and use this information, along with other research, to generate our site descriptions.
When visiting the Francis C. Carter Preserve, I arrived at the entrance off of Old Mill Road. I briefly stopped upon leaving my car to look over some of the wildlife I could possibly come across, as it was outlined on a large wooden sign near the entrance. From there I ventured down a trail loop that consisted of the: Grassland Loop, Grassland Connector, and Narragansett Loop trails. During this trail loop, I was able to experience a sample of each ecosystem present within the preserve. At each location I made a point to note what kinds of flora and fauna might be seen while visiting the preserve. Additionally, I made a point to photograph anything I found particularly interesting, so that I could remind myself of the experience for the writing process. The final thing I ensured to make note of was the different accessibility/recreation level of the different trails I encountered. All these together, I had hoped would give me a good sense of not only what people may see on a hike, but also the physical requirements needed to traverse the preserve.
Once I had visited my preserve, I realized that I was going to need additionally information to make my site description as complete as possible. I pondered the best way to collect the information that I needed and realized that taking some notes from the existing Rhode Island Nature Conservancy website was probably my best bet. Once there I found the Carter Preserve’s page and realized that it was quite outdated (as was to be expected given the nature of our project). With this in mind, in addition to some general information on the preserve that I pulled form the website, I decided that the new description should be all encompassing of what the Carter preserve can offer its visitors. The next thing to consider what format our overall project was going to take.
When considering what format our project should take, we consulted the Washington State Nature Conservancy website, as directed by Tim Mooney. This site is going to be the basis by which the new Rhode Island website will be built. We additionally did some research regarding the setup of the Washington Website, specifically the “Yellow Island” page, to gain some deeper insight into how our project should be formatted. When analyzing the site, the first thing we noticed was how concise and packed with information each sentence was. They used each and every sentence at their disposal and never settled for filler sentences. Additionally, we began to identify techniques they used while writing, as outlined by Montgomery in Chapter 19 of “The Chicago Guide to Communicating Science”. The two main techniques used were a strong introduction sentence or paragraph and sticking with simple language. These two techniques helped to introduce the Preserve to the public, and keep them interested with simple, jargon free, writing. With this in mind we formatted our deliverables to match this style so that it would be as close to the final product as possible. Tim additionally confirmed out choices by stating that the use of simple language is the best approach, as it would keep from boring the reader. Tim also gave us the idea of writing our descriptions so that the sites would seem appealing to people of all physical ability, as well as interest level. He shared with us that the Nature Conservancy wants all people to be able to enjoy the preserves, not just those with a background in hiking and physical activities.
Taking what Tim shared with us into consideration we began to write out our final deliverables and a general outline of what we did to share with Tim. This process took quite some time and the project itself went through various iterations. The very first draft of our project can still be found here. As expected, this draft received a Red Light (go here to see what this means) from our teacher which means it still needed heavy editing and drafting. The main piece of feedback we received on the first draft was that it did not appear as one cohesive project, and it was hard to follow in general. With this in mind we shifted to a format that was meant to be easy to follow and had more of a memo feel to it. Additionally, we decided on a single layout for our deliverables (as outlined above) so that they would appear as they would on a website. The final project came together, in my opinion atleast, as one well written and cohesive deliverable that we hope Tim will find complete and up to his expectations. The final project can be found linked above. Going along with this project is a presentation consisting of our group outlining exactly what we did, how we did it, and why we did what we did to help shed some light onto the whole process.
When considering which student learning outcomes were most important for this project, I landed on a couple specific ones. The first student learning outcomes I found most relevant is “Discourse Community Knowledge”. I found this one important for our project due to the need to understand fully the expectations and standards associated with a project done for a third party. While it is still important to understand the standard and expectations of your teacher when writing a normal paper for a class, this understand becomes exponentially more important when you are doing work directly for a party not associated with your class at all. You need to understand what their company wants, what your direct contact wants, as well as what their audience wants. This can be a lot to keep track of while developing a large project like this, but with the help of our teacher and his feedback I believe he have been able to keep these expectations and standards in mind and achieved this learning outcome. The second student learning outcome that I found important during this project was “Metacognitive Knowledge”. For this project we attempted to as thoughtful and reflective as possible regarding what was the most essentially information to incorporate into the final draft. This affected all aspects of the project including: the site descriptions, the outline of our process’, and even our blog posts. With four people working both independently and together, it was important to all be on the same page with what we wanted to add, making it necessary to determine what was important and what added to the scientific discourse and what did not. This helped us form our decisions on excluding excess scientific jargon, overly wordy description, etc. These two student learning outcomes were the most essentially, in my opinion, and helped us develop our final project to the best of our abilities.