Here is a sample of what our pamphlet could look like.
For our research focus and project, we are focusing on how extractive colonial practices continue to impact the Missouri Botanical Gardens. We have been partnered with the MOBOT for about a year and a half now doing work to investigate our research focus. We have revealed the problem, done a project explaining what it is, did another project explaining where we wanted to go next, and now here we are with a concept and a plan on how to bring our work to life.
The concept of our project is video modules. The video modules will be set up as an interactive and engaging way for MOBOT visitors to learn more about the specific history of plants and initiatives in the Garden, while also allowing for visitors to explore the gardens at their own pace. Our plan to bring this idea to life is to use data we have collected to build these modules surrounding various topics.
Colonization itself is essentially the act of settling over an Indigenous group for one’s own benefit. Extractive colonialism focuses on the idea of taking things from other cultures and places and bringing them over for personal use and benefit. With all that being said, because of our topic, what we are researching has deep ties to the Colombian Exchange and western civilization in general. For one of our modules, we are hoping to focus on the MOBOTS work in Madagascar. The focal point for their work in Madagascar is “conducting biodiversity research and supporting ethnobotanical and traditional knowledge” (Missouri Botanical Gardens website). After having a research presence in the 1970s, MOBOT established permanent operations in Madagascar in the 1980s.
By centering a module on the MOBOT’s work in Madagascar, we are trying to demonstrate initiatives that the garden has already taken to repair the impacts of extractive colonialism. This module will most likely be close to the end. It will focus on what the MOBOT is doing in Madagascar and what the impact has been so far. We are hoping to gather more data for this specific module by speaking with Armand Randrianasolo. Randrianasolo came here as a grad student over 30 years ago and is an expert on a plant family in Madagascar. He started working with conservation and has been really receptive of what really works due to his background. With his help, we will try to make this module as informative and engaging as possible to educate people more on what the MOBOT does.
“It is the best program in my opinion” – Ashley Glenn, speaking on letting people from Madagascar themselves help and lead on the projects.
Our group members
Jay, Kyra, Sophie, and Jaidyn.
Section 1: Process Description
– Although we have been to the Garden three times now, we still have not implemented any data collecting strategies, but we do know what data collection strategies we want to implement. In our last visit to the Garden, we discussed some of our topics and what we are wanting to do with our implementation plan with Ashley. With the thought of data collecting, she suggested to do a focus group or maybe interview a few of the following people: someone in the media, Andrew, and a “formal” interview with herself or Robbie. We are planning on doing the actual data collecting within the next week or two, but because we haven’t really gotten the chance to talk to anyone but Ashley, which made the whole process a bit challenging. Since we have found that surveys don’t really work as well as we were wanting , we have discussed steering clear from those, and finding a different approach to data collecting. Going forward we plan on getting a proper tour of the Gardens specific locations where we want our plan to be, and finding some oral histories, as well as some annotated bibliographies. One of the challenges with the oral histories is actually finding someone who is “perfect” for what we are looking for, and someone who is willing to talk about their heritages and cultural significance in relation to the Garden. Like I mentioned above, today at the Gardens we are getting a proper, in-depth tour of different sections of the Garden like the ottoman Garden, Japanese Garden, Chinese Garden, and many more culturally diverse sections of the Garden.
Section 2: Preliminary Analysis
– During our visit to the garden, we had the chance to speak with Ashley. Although we didn’t collect data specific to our implementation plan, the conversation we had gave us a new perspective. Ashley asked us questions about how we envision our implementation and how visitors might experience it. While we have a general idea of what our product will look like, we hadn’t considered how it would appear from a visitor’s perspective when entering the garden. I think our meeting with Ashley helped us start thinking in that direction. Additionally, she gave us a mini tour of the garden, sharing some background on a few plants. This information might prove useful for our project in the future.
Questions about answering the research question:
- What barriers may be problematic?
- What can we accomplish within our allotted time?
- What we will adjust if the plan isn’t feasible?
- How will we make sure our final product is accessible?
Geographic Focus and Stakeholders: Garden Visitors
Data Collection : Focus group questions towards tower grove house tour guides. The goal is to tell the stories of the people who were enslaved there. Getting more access to the archives to see if there’s anything we could use for information about the enslaved.
- How can we bring the aspects of the exhibit from the basement throughout the house?
- How much information do we have and what do we need to tell these stories accurately?
- How much of the house do we have access to in order to make our exhibit?
Implementation:
Section 1: Research Questions Explain what specific problem or issue you are addressing. Be sure to do this work in consultation with your partners. What research questions do you have about the problem? What do you want to test? What can you feasibly act upon?
I’m not sure what research questions we have about the problem that I haven’t covered in the first section. We want to see how we can engage the garden’s visitors in learning about such a heavy topic as slavery. We can feasibly act upon this by connecting more explicitly with the resources availiable to us.
Section 2: Geographic Focus and Stakeholders This could be as specific as the docents at MOBOT or as broad as the Tower Grove Neighborhood. Explain why you have chosen the focus and who your key stakeholders are. Tell us what you know about them and what you still need to know. Explain the role and level of involvement of each stakeholder.
Our group would like to focus on MOBOT visitors to be Stakeholders. We would like to share our knowledge and educate people who visit the garden about the African American history at MOBOT. Our geographic focus would specifically be the house within the garden. We would like to reach out to as many visitors as possible, our involvement is especially important.
Section 3: Data Collection What data do you need to answer your question: secondary research, interviews, surveys, focus groups, oral histories, ethnographies, scientific experiments? Drawing on your experience from your other CODES courses, develop plans for specific data sets that need to be collected. Each member of the team will be responsible for collecting and curating one data set. Raw data should be maintained in a shared drive accessible to the entire team. Determine what data you will need to collect and who will be responsible for the work. For each data collection activity in your plan, consider why you are collecting it, how and from whom you will collect it, and what methods will be most effective.
We will need secondary research, oral histories, and ethnographies.
Secondary Research: Li
Oral Histories: Priscilla/Aydien
Ethnographies: Shelby
**** we still need to answer the HOW****
Section 4: Implementation What will be the outcome of your research? Will you develop an exhibit, engage students in a learning activity, or design a digital project? Why is this the best plan for implementation? What do you need to know to make the implementation successful? How will it meet the needs of your audience? Who will do each part of the work? How will you assess its success?
The outcome of our research would be creating an exhibit that focuses on the lives and experiences of the slaves and African American connected to the house. Visitors will gain a greater understanding of both the everyday events and the difficult circumstances they had to face thanks to this exhibit. Creating this exhibit would give visitors a more direct and immersive way to interact with the history of slavery connected to the garden. I will need more specific information about the particular people who were kept as slaves in the house, as well as an understanding of their day-to-day activities, to successfully execute the plan. Finding out which rooms in the house are available and which ones are not will also be necessary. In order to learn more about the house and obtain the tax information for the slaves, it would be imperative to get in touch with Sean and Robbie. The exhibit’s success will be assessed based on visitor engagement, feedback, and whether it improves visitors’ awareness of African American history in the home.
Group members: Jaidyn, Kyra, Jay, and Sophie.
Section 1:
Reseach question– Kyra
To develop a research question, we went through various steps in trying to figure out what question combines all our thoughts together. We did lots of research into wicked problems (a wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that’s difficult or impossible to solve because of its complex and interconnected nature). that the Gardens might have. With that research we formulated our main question which is “How do colonial extractive practices affect the Garden”. We have changed the question and reworded it a few times since formulating it to ensure that it is working together with our ideas. We created this research question because we want to bring the issue of extractive colonial practices to light. For many years extractive colonial practices have been “pushed under the rug” and do not get talked about enough. This is a real issue, not just looking at the Missouri Botanical Gardens past but also just in the world around us. Though we can not necessarily force people to learn about the extractive practices that indigenous persons have been through, we can try our best to educate the patrons at the Garden about the Gardens’ past. We are currently undertaking an implementation plan to hopefully better the community’s knowledge of the extractive practices and educate them on the Garden and botany in general has had in the past.
Earlier in our journey we conducted a survey to the garden staff and volunteer staff to get more knowledge about the garden, unfortunately we did not get any data from this. So, with that being said we want to conduct some interviews with the Garden staff and find some secondary research. With the secondary research we are thinking about talking to Robbie and Ashley in the Herbarium and Andrew in the archives. We also want to research similar issues in other Botanical Gardens dealing with similar issues. Another thing we want to do is dive deeper into oral histories. Hopefully the gardens can help to connect us with someone who represents an organization or facility who has seen or experienced extractive practices. Right now, we can start taking a deeper dive into what specific plants we want to be in our implementation plan and how they were used in their native culture.
Section 2:
Geographic focus and Stakeholders- Jay
We haven’t pinpointed our exact geographic focus yet, but we’re leaning toward a broader approach. Since our cohort’s topic is reparative justice and our research question is “How do colonial extractive practices affect the garden?”, we’re considering focusing on the Missouri Botanical Gardens itself—specifically, its visitors. This means our geographic scope is broad, as visitors come from all over. Our key stakeholders would include the visitors and staff like Sean, Robbie, Ashley, and Jennifer. Sean can help us figure out who to connect with and reach out to different areas of the garden, while Robbie and Ashley can guide us on which plants we should focus on. Jennifer will be a great resource for “My Guide to the Garden” and supporting us with our implementation plan.
Section 3:
Data Collection- Jaidyn
In order to develop a strong implementation, plan we must gather and analyze different types of data. Our research question has guided us thus far into the process of creating an implementation plan and we have learned about different types of data and data collection up to this point. Due to the nature of our product, the group has decided that the most beneficial types of data to collect would be data from focus groups, oral histories, and various kinds of secondary research. Focus groups allow us to gather multiple specific perspectives from people in the Garden. Oral histories would be beneficial in order to educate we on the histories of plants and communities that have been impacted by colonial extraction. We would also like to conduct secondary research such as, visiting the herbarium and reading online research and review articles. All of these research methods will support the group in being able to make evidence-based decisions when designing the final product. Data also provides context for our work and provides us a deeper understanding of the problem that is being dealt with. With data we can identify trends and patterns which we can use for informed decision making
Section 4:
The Implemmentation- Sophie
The outcome of our research should be a scavenger hunt with video elements. I believe our project will have an exhibit with a digital element for them to interact with. This is the best plan for implementation because it allows us to reach not only people at the garden, but also people who want to learn about colonialism and aren’t able to visit. We need the help of garden staff, video making equipment, and whatever resources the garden itself can provide us. To ensure that this project is as successful as possible, and beneficial to the garden. We will meet the needs by gathering data about our question “How do colonial extractive practices affect the Garden?”. To create an enriching and entertaining learning experience for whoever decides to participate. We will make the implementation plan for how we want to present it to the garden. We will also be creating the project that will be put into the garden.
The garden will help us in gathering the resources for our project and telling us how they can help along the way to make sure there are no problems during the creation and finalization of the project. As they are the people who know what they want things to look like since it is their garden. While also having the knowledge of how to create something that visitors want to interact with. We will assess the success by seeing how many people decide to participate in the project. Since we cannot exactly know unless someone decides to scan the QR code and interact with the project.
Section 1: Research Questions
Explain what specific problem or issue you are addressing. Be sure to do this work in consultation with your partners. What research questions do you have about the problem? What do you want to test? What can you feasibly act upon?
Our main goal is to have more inclusion of Indigenous knowledge which is currently lacking within the Missouri Botanical Garden. Our current idea/project is to make a Self-Guided Indigenous Plant Tour. In this tour, we plan on having information on plants Indigenous to the Midwest. We plan on exhibiting the medicinal, communal, and ritualistic uses of the plants within the different tribes that use them. Information that will be needed for this project is: an interview from Robbie, articles based on plants that are Indigenous to the Midwest, and with that how that plays into the communities. We would love to talk to someone who has an insight from the indigenous community to help us with what limits to put on what we share. It is very important to remain ethical and keep all point of views in mind.
Section 2: Geographic Focus and Stakeholders
This could be as specific as the docents at MOBOT or as broad as the Tower Grove Neighborhood. Explain why you have chosen the focus and who your key stakeholders are. Tell us what you know about them and what you still need to know. Explain the role and level of involvement of each stakeholder.
We need help from our mentors at the Garden to get the information we need and connect us to others at the garden. We need to know which Indigenous plants we should implement our QR codes on in order to make our idea work. The visitors of the garden are our stakeholders because we need to ensure that they understand our message of Indigenous knowledge. We do not know who exactly our mentor is yet, but we know we will at least need to talk to Robbie Hart or Carolina to figure out what plants would work best. The visitors are who we are focusing on. We want to make sure they have something to take away from our project.
Section 3: Data Collection
What data do you need to answer your question: secondary research, interviews, surveys, focus groups, oral histories, ethnographies, scientific experiments? Drawing on your experience from your other CODES courses, develop plans for specific data sets that need to be collected. Each member of the team will be responsible for collecting and curating one data set. Raw data should be maintained in a shared drive accessible to the entire team. Determine what data you will need to collect and who will be responsible for the work. For each data collection activity in your plan, consider why you are collecting it, how and from whom you will collect it, and what methods will be most effective.
-Robbie interview
– Oral history (someone who represents Indigenous story about the plants)
– website data about plants that are indigenous to the midwest
-Tropicos
-ethnography on the indigenous knowledge already being told at the Garden
Section 4: Implementation
What will be the outcome of your research? Will you develop an exhibit, engage students in a learning activity, or design a digital project? Why is this the best plan for implementation? What do you need to know to make the implementation successful? How will it meet the needs of your audience? Who will do each part of the work? How will you assess its success?
The outcome of our Research is aiming to inform visitors about plants from an indigenous perspective. We want to carefully examine what plants we could highlight in our tour, and which ones connect with the indigenous people. We hope the signage around the gardens will help people engage and learn more about how indigenous people maintained plants. We will have QR codes to help the visitors explore the whole garden instead of just skimming through it. Implementing more of an indigenous perspective will help people understand from a nonwestern voice. We all plan to collaborate in an efficient way by all setting a time to meet together to conduct a website that will display the information of indigenous plants. We want to make sure the indigenous people are also being heard.
Kasey Tipton
April 23, 2024
Our group’s focus is on Indigenous knowledge within the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Our research question is, “How is Indigenous knowledge lacking within the garden?” Our priority is finding the gaps of Indigenous representation. We used two mixed methods, interviews and surveys, in order to collect data. Our survey had received 7 responses and we interviewed 6 people. Doing the small focus groups helped us receive more nuanced explanatory data. However, I think surveys and interviews are both important in gathering data. I believe our survey did not go as planned because these are difficult questions being asked. It could be that some people do not want to feel incompetent, so they just didn’t answer the survey.
Our survey responses left some blank areas within our data. Furthermore, not only did we only have 7 responses, but some people did not answer certain questions. Our group made the visualization below using Qualtrics in order to show answers to our ranking question in our survey data. The question was “Where would you rank the priority of including Indigenous Knowledge in the Garden?” Our responses show that most people thought it was relatively high.
With this being said, our interviews went a lot smoother. There were two people during each interview, and we interviewed 4 times. Troy and I were taking notes, Kadynce was asking the questions, and Evitt was doing the audio recordings. People were able to be descriptive and more thorough with their responses. It seemed easier to people to answer questions in person, rather than thinking about what to type on a survey. Along with this point, in the interviews, people seemed to think longer to answer the same questions. If our group could do this differently in the future, we would try to stick to the idea of larger focus groups (rather than two people at a time) because it improves our data when people can bounce ideas off of each other and add to what others say. We asked six questions to each interviewee including:
The results of our data will help our group tremendously. It has shown us different areas that already include Indigenous knowledge. On the other hand, it has shown us areas of improvement. We can use this information to figure out how to portray Indigenous knowledge evenly throughout the garden. Our interviews overall had similar responses with the survey. For example, our question, “Where do you think Indigenous Knowledge belongs in the garden?” A lot of our responses said that it should be easily accessible in places that involve Indigenous knowledge. In another word, everywhere. One of the most important notes that was given was for us to help the garden improve on allowing for Indigenous knowledge to be important year round. Rather than celebrating it for a specific month/week. The responses in the interviews were easier to interpret than the surveys because they were more detail-oriented.
Using mixed methods on this topic was very important. It gave us multiple different viewpoints on these important topics. Even though our survey and interviews went very well, I think it would be important to hear about how the public feels about Indigenous knowledge. I would like to hear the perspectives of the garden visitors and if they have even heard of Indigenous knowledge within the garden. This can help us in the fall semester because now we know how the workers in the Garden feel about this topic and their insights.
Creating our surveys was a long process that needed a lot of patience and careful refining. Getting good answers from our survey participants was hard. We thought we got 33 responses at first, but only 11 were complete after checking more closely. More than half of the people who started the survey didn’t finish it. Still, the 11 complete responses gave us enough insight at on the lack of African American knowledge at MOBOT.
We wanted to understand how the current employees at MOBOT see the lack of African American representation and knowledge in the herbarium. To do this, we asked questions like “What problems do you see in adding African American knowledge to the garden?” and “How well do you think the gardens show African American knowledge and contributions?” Most answers were similar.
A visualization of things the staff has seen at the garden that represent AA knowledge.
This clearly shows that the employees agree that there is a major lack of Black knowledge in the garden.
We also wanted to be clear about what we meant by African American knowledge. We defined it as “the experiences, history, culture, and contributions of people of African descent in America.”
In our research with the CODES team, we looked at the history of African American knowledge in the garden. We found that the work of enslaved people in botany is often not recognized or acknowledged. They didn’t get credit for their discoveries. We want to fix this by focusing on their stories and trying to make things right through our research. This semester, we used surveys to hear directly from MOBOT. We asked questions like “How well do you think the gardens show African American culture, history, and contributions?” and “What can be done to add African American knowledge to the garden’s work?”
From looking at the survey and our research, we found some themes. Many people think the garden does an okay job at showing African American knowledge, but some think it doesn’t do well at all.
One big theme was that people want to see more diverse events and programs in the Gardens. They want more things that celebrate Black culture, history, and contributions. For example, one survey response said, “Put up signs all around the garden. Celebrate African American holidays, history, community, events, and employees. Make it easier for everyone to come to the garden.” This is important because botanical gardens are mostly about plants, but they should also be places for different cultures to share and celebrate.
When I talked to MOBOT employees, I noticed that donors are important to the garden. Most donors are older, white, and rich. Because they can choose where their money goes, African American knowledge isn’t a big priority for them. It would be good to have more diverse events and programs in the Gardens. There aren’t many diverse staff members, and donors could help with this. They could give money for scholarships and programs for African American students and researchers who want to study plants. This could help make sure that African American knowledge is respected and included in the botanical community. Many of the survey participants were white, so it’s still important to make the garden more diverse.
In the future, our research shows that MOBOT needs to think about and fix the unfair treatment of enslaved people in the past. This could mean making programs and exhibits that talk about the work of enslaved botanists, working with their descendants, and making rules that try to make things fair. By focusing on these people’s stories, the Garden can become a more fair and welcoming place for everyone who visits.
SURVEY
This Lab consists of 2 parts, those being our surveys and the focus group we conducted. The other people in my group are Kyra, Jaidyn, and Jay, our research question is “How does colonialism affect the garden and herbarium”. Sadly, our survey wasn’t very helpful, with us only getting a singular response. This was disappointing because we put a lot of effort into making sure it was perfect and that our questions wouldn’t be difficult to answer. Leading to all of us wondering what we could have done wrong, as we understood it was a topic people didn’t really want to talk about. Due to its uncomfortable nature, but it still is important even if people don’t want to talk about it. We are trying to bring it to a better light, but due to the heaviness of our question. We think it’s the reason for the singular response we got.
FOCUS GROUP
Due to the lack of responses to our Lab it is a bit difficult to properly answer this lab. However, our focus group interview went a lot better than the surveys, because we actually had people with us to answer the questions we were asking. A question we asked was “what programs do you think MOBOT most effectively educates visitors about the impacts of colonialism on botanical knowledge?”. An answer to this question was that they had a table at the orchid show to help people learn and they would talk about the practices of acquiring the orchids. Which is a start to the education of colonialism, but a singular table isn’t going to have the big impact that they are looking for if they want to properly inform visitors. Another question that we asked was “how do you think we could bring information to the people who come to the garden about the historical practices within the garden?” An answer that we got was that they are actively working on ways to bring information to these people and they are working cross program, which means multiple parts of the garden are working together to find a way to get that information out.
when our interview was put into voyant
With our research I don’t think we’ve learned everything that we needed to know. As there is still so much, we could have learned if people answered our survey. I think maybe for our study next time that we maybe make the questions either more simple or try basing our questions on how our peers made their surveys. As they all got a lot more answers than we did, they must have done something that we just didn’t. I have nothing specific that I want to know currently but, the information I would like to know more is for the partners to elaborate a bit more about what they said in our focus group. So, we could get an even better idea of what they are working towards that relates to our research topic.