Introduction of school and preparation

The first week of the research is exciting and amazing. I went to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign one day earlier and clean up the room pf my new apartment here. Although I didn’t know anything here, I feel this city is a great city and I like the city vibe.

The first day of the research is impressive. The student in the lab lead me and another student walk around the campus and get familar with the resource on campus. The school is a huge school and there are a lot of buildings and resources. I know a lot of people in Information Science department and learn about their research project. We also went to the downtown to have luch together and talk about the school and research. There are a lot of information at the first day, because the school is new for me. I really appreciate my mentor and the phd student in her lab spent their time taking us to get familar with the campus and greeting people.

We also did a campus tour of the Engineering school at the beginning of the second day. We know many great study and working places on campus and we can go there sometime later to work on our project, which is quiet. Also, we read three readings, one is the description of our research project and the other one is a whole research plan of our mentor with an article about the background knowledge of the topic of the big project. It introduces the history and future route of research synthesis. Research synthesis means combining the results of multiple primary research studies to test the same conceptual hypothesis. The article emphasizes the importance of doing research synthesis, which is often ignored by people. Another one is a general research planning about the research synthesis by using network analysis. After reading this, I gain more understanding about my research project: the purpose of it, how does it work for the whole project, and so on. I really enjoy reading this article and this project and I think it’s really helpful after we finish it.

In the rest of the week, I made a detailed weekly event planning for my project. Also, I explore and do research about a similar web app and learn about it design and functions for my project with the similarities and difference. I read the description of it and understand what it is. I think this app inspires me a lot about the designing of my web app development and give me a general picture about what it’s like and what should I do with my project. Also, I try try to understand the functions and design of it by reading its tutorial and online resources. Its tutorial also gives me an idea of the tutorial of my web app. For next week, I’ll review some knowledges I will use in this project and also learn about the previous work about this project to prepare well before I really start to do it.