Write an introduction describing your research process, giving an overview of what you learned, and explaining how you decided the themes you used to organize your notes. Submit completed field notes in a Word document and screen shots of other information. As you read, research and interact, you will have to decide what is worth pursuing. For instance: What kinds of behaviors are you seeing? Are there any rituals – rites or passage or ways to establish standing in the community? Are there interesting trends in language use? Are you noticing gendered behavior – or ideas about gender? Do there seem to be differences in opinion among the group? Many of you already have general research questions, but be open to changing them or refining them based on what you learn as your field work progresses. Throughout your research, you should be taking copious notes about what you see, observe, think and, of course, detailing any interactions you have or artefacts you acquire. Screen-shot anything that seems relevant. These are your SCRATCH notes – the notes you take during an interaction that will help you reconstruct it in detail later. That detailed reconstruction makes up your FIELD NOTES. Typically, field notes are typed, organized, and edited version of the notes you took during an observed event, along with your commentary and hypotheses about how you might analyze what you encountered. Field notes may include sketches or other visuals. They should incorporate a mix of detailed desсrіption and a narrative of your own experience and reflections. These notes are the HEART of this project. The goal of this assignment is to give you some exposure to the challenges and possibilities of ethnographic research. Due to the pandemic, all projects this term will be conducted in virtual spaces. Accordingly, your field notes will incorporate less ‘real time’ desсrіption and reflection. Instead, your notes will have a more explicitly analytical and archival bent. The exact content and organization of the Field Notes will vary case-by-case. Some of you are interacting in real time with an online community. In this case, a major part of your field notes will serve as ‘a daily diary’ to describe your interactions and make any comments about what you learned, or what questions you have. Your ‘diary’ may include screenshots if you find that helpful. Others of you are sifting through cached pages and interactions. In this case, you will likely divide your notes up by source (instead of the daily diary). Imagine that you were not going to see this site again and had to rely on your notes to ‘recreate it’ for future analysis down the road: record quotes, capture or describe any interesting visuals, and raise questions. When your fieldwork is over, submit an organized collection of notes, quotes, images etc. (by theme, topic, question). Think of this section of your notes as very similar to what you would do it you were preparing to write a research paper. Create thematic sections (with a brief desсrіption) and ‘collect’ the evidence or supporting materials for that section. How do you know what your themes should be? Find the patterns in your observations! This is your original research which will result in a completely new and unique final paper. You’ll submit all of this in one single word document. Most students field notes are ~10 pages, but can sometimes be much longer. Remember: These are notes. However, they should be edited and visually well organized.
