Campaign and Connect Reflection
Much like the initial Feeding Fido campaign, our group was not as consistent as we should have been. Often times, the posts were made sporadically throughout the day, or en masse on Sunday. James successfully followed roughly 200+ more people on Twitter, raising our total follower count to 209; however, we are not sure how many of our followers are UCI students (our target audience). Likewise, for Facebook, I had invited a few of my friends hoping to gain likes; I was successful in getting 1 person to like, bringing our total to 28 likes. In terms of Pinterest, though I had repinned a few recipes for homemade pet food and treats, we only had one additional person repin one of our pins, besides Dr. Haas' initial contribution roughly three weeks ago. As a whole, we had shared links with each other asking for confirmation on whether the content was appropriate for our campaign to share with our audience, but all in all, the campaign was neglected, excluding the day(s) we posted our links.
Despite the initial reluctance to read through the assignments and take the time to apply myself for the practices, Connect was beneficial in that it taught me a valuable in skim-reading, where it provided tips such as reading the first and last sentences of each paragraph, as well as focusing on important vocabulary to use as keywords for further research. As finding sources to defend one's argument requires the use of multiple sources, which are found after reading numerous articles and journals, learning how to skim-read dramatically reduces the amount of time spent on each potential source, quickly eliminating irrelevant studies and maximizing efficiency.
Additionally, Connect provided the opportunity to practice improving writing skills, such as using semicolons and comma splices; likewise, they provided lessons in annotating, summarizing, and paraphrasing to better understand the text and subsequently your own arguments. The individualized lessons adapted to how well or poorly I understood a concept, providing a self-assessment at the end of the practice. The self-assessment could be utilized to bring awareness to areas of focus that one may not understand as well as other topics, which would then prompt the individual to take extra care on the subject.
