14.10.10

New Interactive Environments. Task Three

Today I am concentrating on different students' study plans as task 3.

I studied Maarja, Jakob, Katri, Mehrnoosh, and Valeria.

1. What elements, components, etc. have been used by others to describe their activity?

All the students named above used a kind of graph to describe their activities during the process. Most of them added written information to graphical illustrations, but Jakob was the only one to get away with only graphic devices. I also noticed that he had added some extra information in the comments section, so it was useful to read.

2. What level of detail?

The most detailed descripition was Maarja's, and the precision caught my eye at once. Jakob, Mehrnoosh, and Valeria seemed the only ones to present their tasks in a graphic form with some explanation of the graph (the latter was a bit longer than the first one).

3. What structural aspects are showing up in their descriptions/visualisations?

Most of the students had used a graph and a short explanation of the graph. Everyone began from deciding on the courses based on the available curriculum and moved on towards different decisions like timing, will to learn, etc. Every single plan had a different approach, but one could find similar clusters. Maarja's and Valeria's graphs were similar in the sense that they involved questions and paths to the final decision, but at the same time I found Mehrnoosh's and Valeria's graphs similar from the meaning of thoughts and decisions.

4. What is missing?

Most of the graphs were missing a thorough explanation.


5. What are pros and cons of the different approaches?

I think a graph is a great tool for visual learners, as it can be presented in various ways (more boring or less boring). Jakob's graph was a great example for an interesting, youthfully grasping graph, and the others were quite classical. In another blog I also found a hand-drawn graph, I assume, which caught my eye at once, but I did not choose the blog for analysis. I would have liked to see a longer description of the choices, because for me it is more interesting to read than to search the words for the author's connotations. Connotations come from our own minds, thus the real explanations from the authors remain hidden.
Pros are definitely the amount of time for creating a graph versus adding an explanation to it as well, the first variant takes up less time for sure.

I also peeked in other blogs and found out that quite a lot of people had chosen the graph approach, this is why I liked Maarja's approach the most, because it was deeply thorough. Jakob gets extra points for his creativeness, and I must say he does have an explanation in the comments.

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