My First Official Experiential Learning Activity

During Winter Quarter, I applied and was accepted to complete my honors experiential learning for the research lab that I am participating in. A brief overview of the lab and how I got involved is here and my actual application/reflection is below. I have really been enjoying working in this lab and will continue for the foreseeable future. 

Here is my Honors Experiential Learning Initial Application.

Summarize your proposed experiential learning activity, including the primary focus of your activity, your intended actions, and the expectations of your supervisor and/or organization/partners.

I am a research assistant at the Neurodevelopmental Disorders Language and Learning Lab ("NeuDLL Lab"); this lab does research projects that look at children with and without disabilities in order to analyze how different groups best learn language. My role in the project is focusing on parent-child play, specifically, we are finalizing a coding system that will help with the analysis of each video. With this, I am expected to review each video and input the data to a computer program, so that it can be analyzed. I intend to work in the lab each week to input the data from the parent-child play and other parts of the research as well as attend meetings and work with others to reduce the variations in the collection of the data.

Explain how your activity demonstrates the values of the Honors Program Experiential Learning area you selected. Rather than reiterating our definition, outline how your activity embodies this definition.

I am intended double major in Disability Studies and Neurobiology. I have experience in volunteering in these areas and want to be involved in research that looks at expanding knowledge in these areas. While I will take classes in these areas, the best learning comes when I am applying knowledge and watching interactions between parent and children, people with and without disabilities, etc. Being in this research lab, I am able to take what I learn in the classroom about disabilities, what I see volunteering and expand my knowledge of this field as well as support new developments from this lab. This embodies the definition as I apply classroom knowledge to the research, learn about proper techniques, and gain valuable hands-on experience.

How and why did you select this engagement? What skills or experiences do you hope to gain from it?

Coming to the University, I knew that I wanted to participate in Undergraduate Research and when I saw this opportunity I knew that this was exactly the lab that I wanted to be working in and the project that I wanted to be working on. This position is a perfect fit as I have an extensive background in working with people with disabilities, particularly running a camp aimed at creating meaningful interactions and play. This connects to the work in the lab: I am supporting the work being done between parents and children with different conditions during play time. I hope to gain more knowledge about the process of research, learn about the different computer programs and the analysis that you use when looking at research.

How does this activity connect to your concurrent or past coursework? How does it speak to your broader education goals and experiences?

I have taken an Introduction to Disability Studies class which discussed disability in a social and historical lense as well as addressing the definition of disability. Likewise, from my research in Speech and Hearing Sciences, I decided to take a class in this area: "Social-Cultural Aspects of Communication." During this quarter, I will be learning about how the difficulties of communication for people with disabilities. Both classes connect to the research as this lab looks at the interactions of people with disabilities with their parents and most effective forms of communication. In the future, I would like to pursue medicine and further research, this research is an amazing opportunity to begin to see these two fields.

How will your activity contribute to the larger goals of the organization/your partners?

As research assistant in the NeuDLL lab, I will be inputting data collected and collecting data from the parent-child play videos. While I my focus is on the parent-child play videos, this is part of a larger study that is looking at how different groups of individuals (those without disabilities, with Autism, etc) learn new words most effectively; this supports the lab's mission of helping "children to achieve their best." I will be contributing to these goals by helping with the collecting of the data and placement into the computer systems. With this data, it will eventually be combined with other information to look for trends that support the mission of the lab.

Throughout this quarter, I have been a research assistant in the Neurodevelopmental Disorders Language and Learning Lab (NeuDLL). I had two main jobs this quarter. First, I entered data into the Redcap system; Redcap is an online website that we enter the lab surveys as well as other information about our participants. The data that I entered was also double entered to ensure accuracy; then, it is ready to be analyzed for the research paper. Second, the behavior coding team went through a series of trainings each week to finalize the coding scheme for the parent-child play videos; I learned how to use Boris, an event logging software. I learned how to recognize parent and child play acts, behaviors, and responsivity; this was a challenge for me to correctly categorize the different sentences spoken and the play acts done. Both of these tasks supported the lab as the lab is starting to be able to look at the data that has been collected and beginning doing comparisons between the many portions of the lab. While my primary job is in behavior coding, the data collected here will contribute to the other data collected to draw conclusions from the lab. 

During this quarter, there was many connections between what I was learning in class and what I was coding on the parent-child play videos. I took a Social-Cultural Communications class and a Honors Invented Language class, both classes looked at speech sounds and how we use language. These topics intersected with the research lab because I watch videos on how parents and children use their language during a play session and understanding language development is the mission of the NeuDLL lab. Being a part of this lab, I have begun to understand the differences in speech and actions as children grow older and with different abilities. I have started to gain a better understanding of how parents foster language development and how children use their language as they grow. While I am far from understanding this idea, I am excited to be working hands-on with this project and learning from these experiences. I have also learned significantly about how research works; the NeuDLL lab uses both qualitative and quantitative research to answer questions about language development. The lab can begin to understand children's language through many different aspects: phonology, morphology, family background, diagnosis, etc. The lab looks at the issue holistically and is able to get quality results that can contribute to the larger community. Furthermore, after the first round of research, the lab will make adjustments to add clarity and decrease the inconsistencies. Having never been in a research lab, I am learning about all the ways that the lab is started, how accuracy is achieved, and more. 

Personally, by working in a research lab, I have learned about my own organization skills; an example of this is all of the paperwork and charts that need to be kept organized during the redcap coding and I built in ways to make sure that I entered with accuracy. Likewise, to support discussion during the behavior coding team meetings, I created a chart that I could write down information about the parent-child video. The chart allowed for me to better explain why I coded something in a particular way and ask clarifying questions. For me, I realized that I learn best by coding a video and then asking specific questions that help to increase reliability between myself and the other behavior coder. 

In the future, I would like to continue to take classes related to language and language development for children. Next quarter I will be taking an education class that should be related to the idea of child development and I am looking forward to seeing the parallels between language and schooling. I will also be continuing in the NeuDLL lab for the foreseeable future; next quarter I will be coding more behavior coding videos as we have increased our interrater reliability and can take the next step to code all of the participants videos. Working in disability related projects is something that I am very passionate about. I am trying to understand disability at each level which is why this lab is a perfect fit: I am learning about language development for people with and without disabilities. I will also be working with people with disabilities on different projects at the university and in my community. These hands-on experiences are truly supporting my personal growth and knowledge about disabilities, which runs alongside what I am studying at the University of Washington.