While I collected data on some of the standard measures that have already been reported, I would like to use this Observations post to bring to attention the amount of laughter that occurred in class this week. On both Tuesday and Thursday, I counted 7 instances of laughter. The criteria that I used to determine a “laugh” was simply that more than one person in class had to snicker, chuckle, giggle or smirk at a particular event. While this may not be the best way to gauge exactly how funny various things were, I felt that but making it necessary for more than one person to be laughing at once, it would eliminate the potential that one person simply found something funny based on an inside joke or personal experience that related to whatever was happening in class.
Tuesday, February 10:
- Instance 1: A majority of the class laughed when Dr. Sample proposed that everyone raise their hand when he asked a question
- Instances 2, 3, and 4: The entire classes laughed during the first round of questions when those called on by Dr. Sample passed the question on to one another
- Instance 5: Many laughed when Mr. Sample mentioned that were would be trying something out another exercise (referring to the Fish Bowl exercise)
- Instance 6: Several people laughed during the Fish Bowl experiment when the first person “tapped in” to the conversation in the middle of the room and relieved someone of their duties
- Instance 7: A general chuckle occurred when someone pointed out that the undecided group, positioned in the middle of the room, did not initially have a seat to represent their opinion at the middle table
- “No taxation without representation” murmured someone in the class
Thursday, February 12:
- Instance 1: A few students laughed at the beginning of the Skype call with the r65 Lab workers as the group waved and said hello
- Instance 2: A couple of students laughed when the audio on the Skype call cut out for a few seconds and Mark Williams mentioned that he, “Didn’t quite get all of that,” referring to a statement made by Dr. Sample
- Instance 3: A few in the class laughed as Alex of r65 labs received a text and cleared it immediately while his phone was on screen-sharing mode
- Instance 4: Many in the class chuckled when Alex turned off screen-sharing from his laptop, realizing that we were looking at ourselves through his Skype feed
- Instances 5 and 6: Many groups at tables laughed when the Misfit bands were passed around
- Specifically, one group snickered as Dr. Sample suggested the reason we are allowed to keep the bands is because r65 Labs doesn’t want them back after they’ve been on our dirty wrists for 10 weeks
- The group I was sitting with laughed when we were deciding whether to wear the Misfit in addition to, or in place of a watch
- One noted, “This thing does everything besides telling the time”
- Instance 7: People laughed at my table when we read aloud the questions others had written about their data sets