Project 2 Description

This project asks you to engage with data, present data for a specific audience, and practice making effective data visualizations. The project focuses on:

• the fair, accurate, and ethical use of data
• how to design effective visualizations
• the conventions of writing with numbers and data
• how to integrate figures into a document.

Audience and purpose are central to the goal of the final deliverables. As you will learn by completing this project, numbers don’t speak for themselves. Writing with data requires critical and rhetorical thought, as well as visual design skills.

While working on this project, you will engage with different types of visuals, as well as the conventions of writing with data and numbers. To achieve these goals, you will select a data set from those listed below. After reviewing the data set you select, you will decide on an argument (thesis) you want to make for a specific audience using the data provided. You will then make decisions about which data to visualize from the larger data set and you will create three data visualizations help illustrate your argument visually. Finally, you will write about and analyze that data in brief final visual report.

The final visual report you create will include the three visuals you have made and the supporting text necessary to explain the data you have visualized and make your point.

In addition to the visual report, you also will create a second deliverable: a reflective memo of about 250-500 words. Similar to the PAD memo in the first project, this reflective memo will explain your choices and goals and how the visual report deliverable achieves them.

Data visualizations bring a number of benefits to any professional document, even short ones:

• Though they have become extremely easy to make, people in the workplace still tend to be impressed by the extra effort and thoughtful presentation implicit in making a visualization.
• Data visualizations also help to make the work of digesting and interpreting data more efficient by displaying trends or illustrating the significance of specific information without poring over page after page of numbers.
• Because of this efficiency, visual elements are also better at communicating certain ideas more quickly than words or tabular data. Something that may take many sentences to communicate, a sudden drop in the efficiency of a process, or a surge in sales among a certain demographic, are instantly recognizable as spikes or dips along the X axis of a line graph.

For example:

This short report from the Department of Education (Links to an external site.) provides an overview of literacy and numeracy for men and women. In this online short report, the authors created two bar charts that are designed to show relationships between data and then they briefly explain the importance of the data.

In your visual report, you will create three visualizations and integrate them into your report, providing an introduction to the topic and analysis of the data you include to make a point about the topic using your data.

Project 2 Assignment Instructions

For this project, you will select a data set from the ones listed below and create a short (approximately two-page) informational report that includes at least three data visualizations that you create and that you feel best communicates the data you select from your data set in a form that maximizes the impact of the data to suit a specific audience and purpose.

To create your visualizations and informational report, please select one of the following data sets:

• Pew Trust Core Trends in Technology and the Internet
• Pew Trust Cybersecurity
• Pew Science Trends
• CDC Obesity and Dietary Trends
• CDC Substance Abuse
• Unicef Literacy Rates and Gender

• Census Bureau Place of Birth and Poverty
• FBI Crime in the US
• Pew Trust Global Economic Attitudes

Once you have selected a data set, spend some time with the data. Identify the trends that jump out at you as most significant. As you identify your audience, think about who would want to know about the data and the point you’d like to make. You will not be able to visualize or discuss all the data in your data set. Your job is to select and visualize the data that is most relevant to your audience and the point you are making.

Deliverables

Document 1: Visual Report with 3 Data Visualizations

A short, informative, visually interesting report that makes a point about your subject using the data in your data set. This report should incorporate at three visuals that you have created along with analysis of the data in your figures. The text in your report should:

• introduce the topic and its importance
• explain the meaning of each of the three visuals
• point to the conclusions suggested by the data.

You should identify a clear audience. Your understanding of the audience informs how the data is presented, the form the visualizations take, and the point you use the data to make, as well as the overall purpose of the document.

Document 2: Reflective Analysis

A 250-500 word memo that explains the following. Use memo headings to identify each of the topics listed below. Format the memo like a memo.

• How and why you selected your data set
• How you selected which data to visualize and why you visualized it in the form you did
• Who was your target audience and what was your overall goal/purpose
• How you ensured that your visualizations of the data were fair, accurate, and clear
• A link to the raw data set used to create the report (with a citation for the data)

Data Visualization Tools

The following tools may be useful in creating your visualizations. There are other tools and apps that you can use, instead. The important thing is to create three original, effective visualizations using the data you have chosen.

• (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)Infogram: https://infogram.com (Links to an external site.)
• Canva: https://www.canva.com (Links to an external site.)
• Piktochart: https://piktochart.com (Links to an external site.)
• Easelly: https://www.easel.ly (Links to an external site.)
• (Links to an external site.)Microsoft Excel (with minor modifications) makes excellent charts and graphs that can easily be copied and pasted into documents.
• Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator (available for students through Adobe Creative Cloud) also have graphics features.

Developmental Analysis Instructions

The purpose of this paper is for you to demonstrate your ability to apply a working knowledge of the theories, terminology, and concepts of human growth and development. You will discuss your own development over your lifetime and how it relates to the developmental concepts discussed throughout this course. You are to analyze your life as it relates to the keys aspects of human growth and development. What are key developmental times in your life and the influencing factors that led to who you are today?

You are to incorporate your empirical studies related to your chosen developmental aspect of your life. Also, use the course readings or presentations to support what you propose about your own development in your paper. Depending on your life and the influences, there may be more attention placed during one period of time. You are encouraged to glean information from your mother about her pregnancy with you to see if there were any notable issues during that time. Remember to include your spiritual development with applicable research.

In addition, obtain as much information as you can about any significant events in your early childhood years. How did you do in those key developmental years? Did you approach all developmental milestones with ease, or were there challenges? Since this is a comprehensive paper, you will address your development across your lifespan.

Finally, you will conclude your paper with addressing any current lifestyle behaviors that may influence your aging process. You are to address these issues, how they will affect your aging process, and what you plan to do about it.

Note: Your conclusion will must offer suggestions for further study.

The body of the paper is to be 8–10 pages (excluding the title page, abstract, and reference page). This assignment is to be completed adhering strictly to current APA format.

You must include at least 8–10 peer-reviewed, relevant sources in your paper (at least 7 of the sources must be at least 7 empirical articles). The sources must be less than 10 years old unless that citation is linked to an author whose work is seminal to your topic.

HCA459: Senior Project

TOPIC/TREND: As an administrator, address the challenges of employee recruitment and retention of health care professionals. Additional subtopics may include trends in the nursing workforce, shortage of primary care physicians, staff turnover, retention, and staffing patterns.

 For this assignment, focus on a specific contemporary trend in health care and be sure to include all of the following influences:

• Changes in client characteristics
• Regulation of the health care industry
• Reimbursement patterns and mandates
• Restructuring of health care organizations
• Impact of technology
• Ongoing social and ethical factors

Address the information above as it pertains to your selected topic, in an eight to ten slide (excluding title and reference slides) PowerPoint presentation.

Your presentation should conclude with a summary describing the following concerns:

• Overall, why should health care managers be aware of this change and trend?
• What impact does this trend have on the stakeholder groups involved (e.g., patients, providers, administrators, third-party payers, legislators, etc.) for a specific organization specified (e.g., for profit, nonprofit, hospital, outpatient clinic, nursing home, etc.).

The information in this presentation will later be used as part of your Senior Project to set the context for the audience you select for a training program on the contemporary trend identified here.

Your presentation must include detailed speaker’s notes (i.e., at least 150 words) for each slide as well as a minimum of one to two scholarly sources from the Ashford University Library and one to two current, scholarly web sources.

Your presentation, and any citations used, must be in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. Examples of scholarly web sources are available in this week’s recommended websites. These sources will also count toward the required sources for your Senior Project. Your presentation must be engaging and relevant to your audience. Lines of text on a slide will not be sufficient for this assignment. It should contain images, graphics, and/or multimedia that communicate your training program clearly to your audience. For tips on creating an excellent presentation, read this overview.

Complete:

You should upload one PPT document (slide deck) with the completed analysis on the applicable slides to the discussion board by the due date/time. We will review/critique some submissions during class.

You should use the following to complete this assignment:

1. Apple Case – found in the Harvard course pack.
2. the Strategic Analysis Template.
3. applicable readings and videos.

Internal Resources (VRIS) Analysis for Apple:

Please perform analysis of Apple’s resources and capabilities (VRIS) using slide #5 of the Strategic Analysis Templates PPT file and data from the Apple case (found in the Harvard course pack). You are encouraged to discuss it and work with a buddy or two.

You should use bullets and phrases w enough description such that it is obvious that it is Apple’s activities being analyzed and we could understand the slide if it were included as an appendix to a report. It should not be written in paragraph form.

You should upload your PowerPoint file (with an updated GDPEST and Porter’s 5 Forces analysis of the PC industry from last week) in Canvas.

If you work with others, all names should be on the submission; and each student should still upload the submission in Canvas.

We will review / critique in class some student submissions, after which you will perform an assessment.

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Value Chain Analysis for Apple Case:

Please perform analysis of Apple’s value chain activities using slides #7 and #8 of the Strategic Analysis Templates PPT file and data from the Apple case (found in the Harvard course pack). You are encouraged to discuss it and work with a buddy or two.

You should use bullets and phrases w enough description such that it is obvious that it is Apple’s resources and capabilities being analyzed and we could understand the slide if it were included as an appendix to a report. It should not be written in paragraph form.

You should upload your PowerPoint file (with an updated GDPEST and Porter’s 5 Forces analysis of the PC industry from last week) in Canvas.

If you work with others, all names should be on the submission; and each student should still upload the submission in Canvas.

We will review / critique in class some student submissions, after which you will perform an assessment.

You are required to write one research paper. Your essays should be about Christianity and food and contain eight sources, but otherwise you may follow the same description above for structuring short essays. You may simply write based on one of the questions given above, (I have chosen Christianity and Food)

Christianity and Food – An increasingly discussed moral issue in Christianity in light of theology, environmental ethics, and animal well-being is the issue of eating well. In light of Christian issues such as a theology of creation, environmental ethics, and animal well-being (you do not need to examine all three necessarily, but you certainly might), what would an ethical diet look like that has its roots in the Christian tradition? Note: If you like, feel free to write on a different religious tradition—whether one you practice and are more familiar with or one you simply would like to investigate further.