My group and I have decided to make a little research regarding the usage of social medias among students in UTM for our first project. My prior idea was to compare the activities between the first-year students and the fourth-year or third-year students if it somehow affects the time they spend on social media. Unfortunately, after distributing our survey, we did not get any feedbacks from the fourth year students since we only opened the survey within a week and it was no surprise that we had no connection with the seniors, thus, making it hard to reach them. I also initially thought that by gathering the information, I get to prove that the time spent on social media indeed gives an impact to the students’ time management. This is where the hypothesis testing gets handy. I was in charge of getting the hypothesis testing done. Frankly speaking, it was hard since we have not learned the topic yet. So, I had to do a lot of research on it to finally understand the concept. It was only when we finished the project when we were finally introduced to the topic. Fortunate enough, the due date was extended so there was more time for me to recheck my understanding with the syllabus taught during class. It was also a good thing that we managed to complete most of our tasks for the project before the movement control order. So, it was not really a hassle to get everything done separately especially when it was a group project. Only a few editing parts were left to be done.
There were a lot of research done and it was undeniable that social media is a very wide and popular platform used by many. Thus, making us worry if there were any groups picking a rather similar topic. If so, there would be unnecessary conflicts between groups and would trigger the competitive sides of the teammates. Although I want everyone to do their best in getting the project done, but I would like it better if it is done in a healthy way without comparisons. But since we had the topic in mind for so long, we decided to just go with the topic after asking other groups from the same section regarding their topic. In fact, there were many aspects to observe if we picked the topic. We are netizens as well, so it was easy for us to predict which social media is best for which aspect. However, we thought that others’ perspective would possibly make a difference especially when the respondents have different backgrounds. Business students might be active on social medias to market and advertise their products. Different majors tend to use social medias differently.
All in all, it was a splendid journey along the way of completing the project. It would be a lie to say there were no hardships. However, we managed to settle it and agree to disagree for the sake of our project. My group members were all very dependable and I was happy that we get to complete the project hand in hand. Apart from gaining more knowledge through researching and hands on skills due to Rstudio, I also get to improve my communication skills and enhance our teamwork. Teamwork makes the dream work.