For the past few weeks we have been doing tasks to improve our skills within research and communication. Each task allowed us to utilise our resources to find information and look harder at what we want to find and accomplish through our research. This task is an evaluation of all the others.
Task 1 and 2 was to help us know how to look for reliable sources and get into the swing of research. We had to find an image in the library to scan, then find something on a website that relates to it, then find a museum where it can broaden the informtion on the topic. With this task I chose a picture of a Greek God sculpture then went on to research about the modern day portrayals of greek mythology, then found beauty and the beast. The original story was that of Cupid and Psyche. I started off with something I personally found interesting so this task wasn’t particularly difficult in terms of being motivated. However, it isn’t always easy to find things on the internet that relate back to a random selection of a picture in a library.
Task 3 and 4 was very enlightening because I previously didn’t know how to Harvard reference. That was what this task was all about, learning how to give the correct credit to the owners of the picture or quote you are using and then putting it into practice. This task was quite simple for me since all of the information for Harvard referencing was easy to find. Now I know for future circumstances, how to properly reference what I am using.
Task 5 and 6 was one of the two that I found hard to do since I had to look for a fashion designer that fully exposed on the internet what their inspirations and references were when making one of their collections. I am not good at using the internet to the best of its ability so it took quite a long time to find the right in-depth information. Everything after that was much easier; making the mood board showing their inspirations and then picking a picture to research further into.
Task 7 and 8 was the second one that I found hard purely because I struggled to understand their academic way of writing. We had to read a text from a fashion book and then pick a part of it that interested us to write about. Then we had to relate it to another two pieces of text so that we can have evidence supporting our views. I tried my hardest to understand what was being said within the quote that I chose and therefore wrote about the importance of fashion nowadays, since I am also a fashion student. It didn’t take me long to find other texts to support my views because the importance of fashion is such a broadly discussed issue within the fashion industry.
Task 9 and 10 was an interesting task to do because I have always enjoyed sharing my views on sexism and feminism in the modern world. The ethical issue task was given to us in a form of a picture that we had to analyse. I did a lot of research for this because a lot of other people also had something to say about the same disturbing advertisement that I was analysing. It helped having other views compared to mine.
There are a few new things that I have learnt throughout this module of research and communication skills. I mostly think it helped me to slowly get back into the habit of writing and research for all of my projects, so I can continue to do it effectively in the future.
Monique Olowu