Over the course of my academic journey at the University of Washing Bothell, I have encountered the five IAS learning goals in ways I didn’t expect. Though my e-portfolio mainly consists of my creative endeavors at UWB that doesn’t disqualify them from being able to relate to the five IAS learnings goals.
How I define collaboration and shared leadership is that not only are you present in a group orientated project, but you are also working alongside your peers and putting yourself in the forefront to contribute your ideas and work. The artifact that reflects my achieved skill of collaboration and shared leadership is my Public Performance artifact. In Public Performance, our group had to come up with ideas of how we can engage the public by using some form of literary work that we as a group came up with that addresses a concern or problem. Considering that our campus was a commuter campus my group thought we would address the problem of social isolation among students. My group decided to create a question and answer stall where we would incentivize students to talk to us in exchange for food. All that was left was to create the literary aspects. As we were brainstorming ideas I took charge of making sure everybody was speaking up and shared their ideas. At this point, one of my peers brought up an idea to create a “hacked” menu where instead of listing food and prices it would list various talking prompts and our short creative works. They knew how to design a menu and another group member was more socially confident in talking to strangers, which made them perfect for being a host when the performance went live. Everybody had a role that relied on their personal skill making them their own leader within the group. Not only was this collaboration successful but I allowed others to be in charge of aspects of the project that they were confident at.
When defining critical and creative thinking is that creative thinking is coming up with new ideas, critical thinking is assessing those ideas and refining your thoughts. Even when presented with a difficult project outside my comfort zone I am able to creatively come up with solutions that still fit the requirements and my own needs. I believe that my artifact, Portfolio of Actions which requires me to come up with an action to repeat it in public, covers this IAS learning objective. I had to think about potential public locations and critically consider all the pros and cons that are associated with that location. Stores are a good place to attract the public eye but most of them don’t allow filming and disruptive behaviors. I also had to consider what I’m physically and mentally up for as I am I’m self-conscious and dislike acting out in the public eye in ways that are considered out of the norm. This leads to me having to creatively come up with ideas of what my repeated action should be. Should I obnoxiously act like I lost my baby doll to strangers, perhaps a public art performance, or even a passive performance where I laid in a shopping cart and had someone pushed me around? After some thought, I came up with the idea to spin around near a stoplight. It was the perfect middle ground of public but not confronting anyone and a repeatable action that doesn’t hurt my pride.
After looking at the UWB’s Learning Objective, I have concluded that writing is the interaction between author and audience, and communication would be the exchange of information between two parties. Though my own technical writing skills may be poor at times, however, I know am capable of writing works that show my intention, thoughts, and possibly personality. My artifact, An Assimilation of Various Dream-Like Thoughts, is a good example of showing off my writing style alongside the type of quirks and interest that I want to communicate to my audience. During this time of my life, I was slightly addicted to short urban horror tales which inspired two of my stories. I also like writing stories that were strange or dark in theme. What I wanted to communicate to my audience was my interests of the time. Coming up with a theme for my chapbook was difficult for me. How could I relate to all of my stories under a unifying theme? I decided to have my theme to be dreams or dream-like. All of my stories could are imaginative where it’s scenario could only exist in my daydreams or actual dreams. Though everybody perceives work differently I hope I communicated my themes clearly through my writing.
My artifact, Living Phantom Final Photos, represents both the IAS learning goals of diversity and equity and interdisciplinary research and inquiry. Based on the UWB’s Learning Objectives, interdisciplinary research is a combination of critical and creative thinking when regarding research questions, pursuing them with the right research method, and finding out the intended audience. Interdisciplinary inquiry means the method or thought process of how you research. Also, diversity isn’t just a racial aspect but it also includes all parts of your background like sexuality and gender. Equity is describing that rather than giving everybody an equal chance it considers your background and builds you up to make sure you have the same opportunity. My Living Phantom Final Photos isn’t just limited to the documentation of the project, but it is also the direct result of my contributions to the initial brainstorming and research of the project. represent my research skills. I had to help with the class research and think of the type of person we are trying to represent and the emotion we want to elicit from the audience from our work. As a class, we had to consider if building our tent in the likeness of the Kaaba cultural appropriation. We also had to consider who do we specifically wanted to represent. Each of my classmates and I had to do research on the type of people we wanted to represent and we all agreed that it would be American Muslim women. This creative project specifically addresses female Muslims living in the US and how they are treated likes ghosts. The photos I took illustrate the large scale group project that my class went through and our progress of how we address the social issue of an unrepresented minority group. Despite the contents of my e-portfolio be based on my artistic project they are all diverse enough to touch all of the five IAS learning goals. Though I have been apart of many other projects that are not artistically based I thought it’d be best to have a consistent theme throughout my e-portfolio.