When this course first started, I had very little knowledge about project management. However, as we are nearing the end of the semester, I can honestly say that I now have general project management knowledge. During the course of this semester, I can also see how my English writing skills have significantly improved. I am confident that one of the underlying reasons behind this achievement is related to the fact that we had to write weekly academic research papers. Moreover, it is important to note that Dr. Bird has a unique and great way of teaching. His style of teaching promotes class interactivity, by involving the students in all class sessions. As course assignments, some of the class sessions were led and presented by the students themselves.

Throughout the course, there were many discussion topics that were of interest to me. Such as, work ethics, conflict management, and change management. Personally, the topic of change management became of interest to me, driving me to read and learn more about. Based on the literature I have read in relation to the topic of change management, it is evident that having such skills are vital to have when wanting to successfully implement and manage an IT project. This can be more specifically important in healthcare IT projects, where many of the healthcare organizations that are implementing IT solutions are being faced with various types of end-user resistance.

Personally, I have no previous experience in managing a project. However, this course has taught me a lot that I will hopefully be able to apply in my professional career. One thing I will never forget is the fact that project management is not an easy role at all, especially given the fact that you are ultimately dealing with both human and financial resources, both of which are challenging to manage.

Unlike management in any other field, healthcare management holds the responsibility of dealing with customer values on a much higher level, as the services healthcare managers provide impact people’s lives and at times deal with matters of life and death. This ethical aspect directly affects the important role values play in healthcare and come as a challenge as patient values vary and have many factors from religion to traditions of patients; what may be important to one patient may not be to another and vise versa.  In addition, responsibility of considering patient values increases as patient issues may be in a days work for healthcare managers, but can be life altering for patients. 

In addition to understanding the importance of patient values in healthcare management, I have also learned that there are many different management styles which are based on one’s personal strengths and needs.  Prior to this course, I felt as though there was only one right way to manage based on my past experiences with managers.  On the contrary, when I managed, I would find myself doing things in a very different way and still succeeding in accomplishing my goals.  Now that I have taken this course, I have learned that many of the strategies I would use, such as team motivation through employee involvement, are very important and universal aspects of management. 

Furthermore, David C. McClelland’s Motivational Needs Theory is a great demonstration of personal management styles that is based on what motivates an individual from the three dominant needs: the Need for Achievement, Power, and Affiliation; the Need for Achievement is when one wants to “perform difficult and challenging tasks on a high level”; the Need for Power is for those who “like to be in charge”; the Need for Affiliation is when someone “seeks good interpersonal relations with others.”  In order to determine what motivates you, McClelland developed a quiz which Dr. Bird had our class take to determine what motivates us.  Surprisingly, I scored the same amount for all three motivational styles and learned that I am balanced.  I highly recommend others to take the quiz, which is available at the following reference: McClelland, D. (1985). Human Behavior. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman.  I was unable to find a direct link to the quiz, but I have included a link for anyone who would like to read up more on this theory.

http://www.12manage.com/methods_mcclelland_theory_of_needs.html

The Jazz Voice: A Hymnic Projection--The attempt to tap into previously unused resources is great, as are the points abotu hte influence of the jazz voice as giving individuals the power to speak out, reach out, act and situation of power in the individual actor.

Jazz Music Therapy--This was a very interesting presentation. I highly enjoyed the discussion of previous studies in music therapy and was suprised that there had not been more done in the area. It seems you have simplified a highly expansive and large study, keeping the budget almost rediculously reasonable. If you wanted to pursue this I could not imagine how you would be unable to find funding.

Jazz and Sports Integration: I was surprised by the connections between sports and jazz that you pointed out, particularly what you said about how baseball is like jazz improvisation. I particularly like the idea of the collection of oral histories which seem to be devalued in our society, but represent a significant and untapped part of scholarship.

Responding to a question from Jackie, I found a paper that attempts to model "rational" imitation in social networks.  It's fairly mathematical but you might find it interesting if you just read for the general ideas.  

Jazz and Identity:

I thought you had a great start. I have a few questions that might be helpful to answer for your proposal: How much involvement do you see from the advisor? Can an advisor take a role in identity development? How exactly does this work? Should they? Is it possible to develop identity with the instruction of an advisor?

I’m curious about the selection of five years as a grouping point for musicians. It seems that you’d want to allow that a new musician and a musician with four years experience could be in a different group. How about asking the participants to select a proficiency level and grouping them accordingly.  

Does/can music constitute identity or must it necessarily flow from or in dialogue with an extant identity?

Women and Jazz:

Your presentation was excellent and the field seems desperately in need of more research. It might be a really nice addendum to collect and record musical performances if you can find some – particularly if you can make them accessible to the rest of us.

I think I heard you say at one point that the perception was that women performed for men, underneath males. The body in a sense became a currency for the jazzwoman seeking to play in a role perceived as masculine. I think this area might also be able to use some theoretical development. It’s a great kernel to start. I also wonder if there’s a difference in the perception of commodification between America and Europe during the period.

Jazz in education:

Your approach sounds innovative. I wish my musical class had looked like that – when I learned to play the recorder, I think I learned Mary Had a Little Lamb. Scat could have made the class a lot more fun.

Identity Formation: I appreciated the group’s proposal because I can see it functioning effectively in the public school system here in Los Angeles.  Music and Arts are important in Los Angeles schools, although I know there is an omni-present sense that the school board will one day completely eliminate the programs.  Perhaps a proposal such as this would inspire the negation of such talk.  Being a theological student myself, I of course appreciated Jeremy’s discussion of Judith Butler, but I also appreciated hearing about the five stages of development, something I had never learned about before.  This group’s presentation really highlighted the benefits of transdisciplinary work.

Jazz and Middle School Education: I was extremely captivated by this group’s proposal because I believe it would be an extremely successful way in which to re-invigorate creativity in middle school aged students.  I remember when my little brother was a middle school student, he first began showing interests in musical instruments, expressing a desire to use music as his creative outlet. I can just sooooo see how a program such as this would have been helpful to his success as a student and also as a musician.  The proposed use of scat in the classroom, I found really innovative.  Also, providing assignments for the students in which they essentially conduct independent musical research I thought was brilliant and would assist in heightening their comfortability with research, working individually, but also collaboratively. Brilliant and well thought out! 

Michele Finazzo

I echo the previous bloggers' apologies for not posting this last week. I thought it was due the day before class.

Jazz Women: 

This group did a great job showing the dearth of information on the role that women played in the early history of jazz. Moreover, there seems to be very small amount of scholarship or even accounts of who some of these women were and this group’s dedication to recording these histories is commendable. The choice of topic is both insightful and commonsensical at the same time. I really enjoyed this presentation.

Jazz in Middle School: 

This group’s project was innovative and it will be interesting to see the results of this study. I think this project has a great chance of being funded and for some reason I felt  like it would make a great PBS documentary. It is important to get children of all ages involved in music and I felt it was entirely appropriate to focus on the often neglected middle schoolers.  

Identity Construction:

This group employed a more scientific approach to their project examining the relationship of identity and music. From a personal perspective I loved that you used Judith Butler (one of my favorites) and used her theory of identity construction. This is another project that could easily be filmed and broadcast on PBS. It seems to me this project will be successful in proportion to the degree that the students are silenced. In other words, giving a student a voice will be more powerful when the student lacks a voice in the first place. This is a positive contribution to scholarship. 

Here's a restatement in print of the final assignment requirements (after the presentations), in response to questions:

When do you want us to hand in the written portion of the group presentation?

The answer from the syllabus is still correct: "Final grant proposals are due no later than Monday, 22 December." 

I will grade these over the holidays and if you wish return the papers with comments. 

I also need to know if anyone wants to be pass-fail by December 22.  If I don't hear otherwise from you, I will give you a grade.  If you want to be pass-fail please email me to make sure I get the message and I will confirm. 

We are also unclear on what needs to be turned in to you as the written portion.

This was not in the syllabus and while I've tried to describe it clearly in class, I apologize for not having provided this information in written form.  Here's what I want:

• A project description.  This should be no more than ten pages, not including any bibliography, which can be as long as you like.  The project description should provide a view of the whole research project: What problems it is intended to solve, the methods to be used, resources required, how it is necessarily transdisciplinary, etc.  This will necessarily be a high-level view because the specific activities will depend on what grants you get. 
• Three or four LOIs (Letters Of Intent) summarizing specific grantable sub-projects.  Each LOI is two to three pages long.  These letters should be written to specific granting agencies, ideally but not necessarily in response to specific RFPs (Request For Proposal).  (It doesn't matter if the RFPs are expired.)  The LOIs should describe the intended activity and results, the use of the grant money, and how the proposed work contributes to the large project defined in the project description.  These sub-projects can be done by one or multiple people, and can be within a single discipline or can involve multiple disciplines. 

Feel free to ask questions in the comments.  If you want to email me a question for whatever reason that's fine.  I may "sanitize" your question to remove any personal details and also answer it on the blog if it is potentially relevant to more than one student or team. 

--Jed

Whoops, didnt realize these were due until today. Hope this is still acceptable:

Identity Formation:  I really liked the group's multidisciplinary approach through music education.  I think music can be a very powerful tool in helping teenagers develop their identity.  I think the creation of jazz groups, rather than focusing on individual players, is great for teenagers too, and part of what makes jazz such a communal art.  I also liked the theoretical discussion of Judith Butler's theory of identity construction.

Jazz Women of the Mid 20th Century:  This topic was fascinating to me because I knew so little about female jazz musicians (outside of singers like Holliday), and to hear there was such a big tradition that is relatively unknown was shocking.  I really think this group should continue their project and I hope they get the funding for it because it is a necessary piece of history that could be lost without proper archiving.

Jazz Improvisation (sorry I didnt get the exact title of this group down):  Much like the first group, I really liked the musical education approach of this group.  I think the journal reflections will be very beneficial for the students.  I also liked how this group incorporated hip-hop into the jazz tradition.  I think that is an important connection for the youth of today.

Mashups functions are great for the website developer. It can provide great tools for new developers to use easily. As John discovered in the class that we have to use only IE to view and add mashups to our webpages, this is a downside of it. I tried to create several mashups for the website hoping they all work well. However, some of the mashups don't allow me to use easily. Even if we already installed the Silverlight to use mashups, some of them require us to use another version of SilverLight and we have to uninstall the old one first before installing a new one. For example, WeatherWidget, it requires version Silverlight 2 Beta 1 (2.0.30226) instead of version Silverlight 2 RTW (2.0.31005.0). I think mashups can do the same task as the widgets we used in Wordpress. If we create any mashups and don't put any inputs but show only the mashups functions themselves, when we copy the embedded code and paste to our webpage, it'll just show those functions like widgets. This is quite interesting for me. If we put the input function, it means we are expanding the mashups functions but the first result is not the things we want to show, but it's the text, blank space, and the icon for us to click. Then, it will show the result according to what we put in the blank space. During the Thanksgiving week, I think I'll put the Technology deals and news for my mashups. If there are more space on my webpage, I'll put more.

My project is on going with not much progress. The interesting problem is I can't install some of the plugins that require me to modify the database (as Daniel suggested). However when I see the claremont conversation having those plugins, it really makes me feel why I can't do that haha. I'll try to work on modifying the skin to make it look better.