This is the first AP for our STEAM class, Social Entrepreneurship. In this unit, we dove into the psychology of companies, how they operate successfully, and how they build trust within their community. We learned about I-O psychologists, consultants, and SWOT analysis, and how they all contribute to problem-solving and the smooth functioning of companies. We even had a visit from a consultant, where she gave us in-depth insight into her work and how SWOT analysis works. We also learned about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and the Tragedy of the Commons. This gave us a little bit of context as to how we function in our daily life, and how we can use it to be beneficial to humans as a whole. Learning all of this eventually led up to our Action Project, where we got to conduct our own SWOT analysis, to try to find a resolution to a problem we identified in our own school. Below, you will see the problem I identified and my SWOT analysis interviews. Enjoy!
How's our Communication?
For this project, I started thinking about what I wanted to improve about GCE. There wasn't much I was able to come up with because I was pretty happy with how things are currently going. I tried remembering my classmates and my past conversations about this topic because I knew we had talked about it before. Pretty quickly, communication came to mind. More specifically, the depth of the information in our weekly emails, information about FE's, and class schedules, and how I don't always feel like I am prepared enough with the information we are given. Once I figured out my topic, I started thinking about who I wanted to interview to perform my SWOT analyses. Our requirement was to interview 2 staff members, 1 classmate, and 1 non-classmate. I chose to interview my Junior year STEAM teacher (ACL) because I felt like he had been involved in the communication process before so I wanted to get his perspective, my current STEAM teacher (HK) because he is new this year and I also wanted to gain his perspective on how well he felt communication was for him, my classmate (CDH) because we had talked about this before, and my non-classmate friend (KH) because we had also talked about this topic before. I gathered a lot of very helpful information, as each interview was 15+ minutes, and I was able to condense it all into 4 individual SWOT analyses, and eventually, into one final one. Below, you will see a slideshow of everything I gathered.
After conducting each interview, I had to start thinking about a resolution for this problem. Was there even one that was possible? I gathered a lot of different perspective solutions that ultimately inspired my own, but I definitely think there are many solutions to this. The main points that stood out to me were that we are a small school so we are easily adaptable and thus can implement new ideas pretty smoothly, however, being a small school also means that there limited resources in terms of staff. Many of the solutions that we came up with, would be difficult to implement because, with such a small team, someone would have to commit a lot of their individual time. Some of the best solutions I heard was a tier system of emails you could subscribe to; tier A and B - A being basic information (dates, events, etc), and B being a more in-depth email with explanations. The other was just where the basic information is bolded at the top of the email and then you can scroll down for the more in-depth information as you please. The problem is that many students don't even read the emails so someone would put in their time to write an in-depth email that half the school will pay no mind to. With the solution I came up with, I wanted to have a sort of 'middle-ground' between the ones from the interviews.
My idea is to still continue weekly emails (at the end of the week or beginning) and put the more important and basic information (dates, events, timeline, future FEs, etc) in that email so students will be inclined to look it over. Then, for the students that want more specific information, there can be a link to the GCE website that takes you to a specific section that has everything you would ever want or need to know, written there. This would be easier so that as new information comes up, someone can just update it on the website instead of having to write a whole new email, and it is easier to have one designated space to find everything. That way, students won't have to overwhelm the teacher's resources and seek out different staff members, because it will all be accessible, avoiding the Tragedy of the Commons.
