Category: Observers

While observing the class this week, I chose to pay attention to people in the class’s “Ticks” or gestural habits. The two main areas I analyzed were upper body ticks (i.e., fiddling with their hands) and lower body ticks (i.e., heal tapping or knee jiggling). I also observed if people partook in both upper and lower body ticks.

Tuesday- 20 students in class

Lower Body Tick- 11

Upper Body Ticks-5

Both-5

Probability of Lower Body Tick- 55%

Probability of Upper Body Tick- 25%

Probability of Both- 25%

Thursday-21 Students in Class

Lower Body Tick- 7

Upper Body Tick- 5

Both-3

Probability of Lower Body Tick-33.3%

Probability of Upper Body Tick-23.8%

Probability of Both-14.2%

 

These findings were interesting to me because it became clear that many more students tend to have lower body ticks. Also, that people who had upper body ticks were very likely to have a lower body tick in addition to their upper body tick.

My estimation for their being less students with ticks on Thursday is because we did more group work than we did on Tuesday. I believe that group work makes for a more relaxed atmosphere, leading to less reasoning for students to engage in nervous ticks.

 

 

 

 

As this was my first time being an observer of the group, I was unsure as to what I would need to record. One of my primary observations was the color of shirts/ jackets/ upper body clothing that people wore to class on both days. The dominating colors for Tuesday were:

• Black = 7 people
• Grey= 6 people
• Blue = 4 people
• The rest were scattered.

The dominating colors for Thursday were:

• Black= 5
• Grey= 3
• Rest of colors were scattered.

It is interesting to see that the number of dark colors decreased from one day to another, although one could say that this was due to the weather. I would like to propose the idea that perhaps this change occurred because the Thursday class was much closer to friday and the weekend. Subconsciously people may associate the days after Monday with darker colors/moods and latter days with more color and life. While this may be a trivial observation with a more-trivial analysis, it is interesting to see the change.

Another observation made was the participation of the class with the new “everyone raise your hands” policy implemented. This technique was invented so there would be more class discussion without the awkward silence in between Dr. Sample’s questions. Out of everyone who raised their hands, only 19 people form the entire class talked in Tuesday’s class. After the policy had been implemented and the fishbowl constructed, there was a rise in participation. For each question asked there an average rotation of 3 people in the seats, along with 5 people in the fishbowl being the highest number at any given time. This was more participation than had been seen before, but there were few questions asked by the students themselves. On Thursday’s class, there was more active questioning on behalf of the class. While talking about fit bits, mostly the entire class was engaged in the video chat, and more questions were asked than was the norm seen in Tuesday’s class. Firstly, 5 people asked questions about the functionality, durability, and overall advantage if the device, indicating that they were highly interested in the subject. Even more people were researching the fit bits on laptops, as every table had every person on a laptop with the exception of 1. One can potentially draw the conclusion that since the installment of the new “hands up” policy more people have gained confidence in speaking their minds and becoming involved, since everyone has a chance of being call upon.

On Tuesday and Thursday of this week, I decided to observe some of the patterns of sickness that seem to be sweeping the campus this time of year. Over the length of each class (and the few minutes I was in the room before and after class), I recorded how many times I heard someone in the class:

• Cough
• Sneeze
• Sniffle
• Clear his/her throat
• Say the word “flu”
• Say the word “cold”
• Say the word “sick”

From the data below, we can see a few trends. One obvious trend is that the all “sickness-related actions” seem to decrease on Thursday. However, some of this data could be skewed, because of the fishbowl discussion. I did spend some time in the fishbowl, and I was not able to track these behaviors as closely as I hoped during that time. Even so, it seemed to me that the prevalence of “sickness-related actions” did indeed decrease during Thursday’s class.

Tuesday, Feb. 10th			Thursday, Feb. 12th
Action	Occurrences		Action	Occurrences
Cough	26		Cough	14
Sneeze	2		Sneeze	2
Sniffle	23		Sniffle	12
Clear throat	24		Clear throat	11
“Flu”	1		“Flu”	0
“Sick”	2		“Sick”	1
“Cold”	1		“Cold”	1

On Tuesday and Thursday, I observed the tendencies of our classmates. I wanted to see how our posture and attention shifted throughout class. There were three observable categories: number of hands on faces, number of phones on tables, and number of students looking at laptops. The frequency of each of the categories was calculated in 15 minute intervals both Tuesday (2/11) and Thursday (2/13).

I predicted that people would get more tired (more hands touching faces) and people would lose attention (stare at their computers and phones) as class ensued. Those trends can be seen in some sections, but the trend is not perfectly linear.

Also, I would like to note that some of the statistics might have been skewed because of our “fishbowl” session on Tuesday.

 

 

 

I wasn’t able to be in class this week, so instead of gathering data in class, I took a look at how our class used the blog. Specifically, I took a look at the frequency of certain words, similar to the State of the Union Adress database we examined.

Data From 2/3: Reader Blog Posts: How many times did Readers use the following words?

Graphics: 2

Works of Art: 2

Photograph: 1

Hemings Count: 13

Jefferson Count: 27

Slavery: 13

Data: 9

Search: 8

The: 118

 Data From 2/5: Kissinger Questions: How many times were the following words used by groups?

Data/database: 2

How: 7

What: 10

Why: 4

Mean: 4

Textplot: 6

Color: 3

Network: 2

Word: 4

 

February 3 Class

Men in class: 25
Women in class: 3

Instances of male participation: 25
Instances of female participation: 4

Male participation ratio (# of male participations: # of men in class) = 1:1
Female participation ratio = 4:3

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February 5 Class

Men in class: 25
Women in class: 1

Instances of male participation: 11
Instances of female participation: 2

Male participation ratio ~ 1:2
Female participation ratio = 2:1