Post 9: Field Research Reflections

Any issues or changes: So far, I didn’t make any big change to my research, however, I did refine and modify my research gradually referring to the comment and feedback from Ms. Reudink. For me, identifying a research topic is the most difficult step. This is because it requires both realistic conditions and the need to ensure that I am able to understand and operationalize the process from the design to the analysis of the results. Although I was thinking about changing my topic to ‘The Effect of sunlight duration on the growth rate of different plants’, and my subjects will be tomatoes and beans, I eventually find out that this required more places and laboratory conditions. Tomatoes and beans require different type of fertilizers, different amount of water, and their growing stages are not perfectly matched. Therefore, I’d keep my current topic until I can come up with a better one.

My appreciation: Yes. Designing and implementing a study myself gave me the opportunity to appreciate the difficulty and complexity of ecological theory development. This is because each step of the experiment requires a great deal of sophisticated preparation, observation, and implementation. And every change in detail often brings a huge change in results or theoretical direction. For ecologists, this work requires not only a large knowledge base, but also patience and perseverance. Ecological environments are always changing, but changes are usually required to be controlled in experiments. Ecologists must find a balance between the two to complete a valid experiment. In conclusion, ecological environment is an interesting direction with strong academic and practical applications. I admire the dedication of ecological scholars. This course also made me more interested in ecology and have a deeper understanding of ecological environment experiments.

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