Month: October 2024

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? 

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Implementation:  

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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. 

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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.