Introduction
The data visualization for week 4 was aimed at recording and keeping track of all learning activities engaged in this week. I also wanted to understand how much time I spent on an activity, and how that time was influenced by the preceding activity, and my motivating factor.
During the data collection process, I realized tracking the exact duration of activity was challenging due to work and family distraction hence I categorized the duration into three as demonstrated by the legend.
Objectification of the elements of the visualization
I decided to use three main colors to represent the kind of motivation that led me to engage in the activity and to some extent how I felt about that particular activity
Green Color – This indicated that it was self-initiated activity and I was in high spirit and ready to engage with it.
Red Color – This indicated that I saw the activity more like a requirement and it was a burden to engage with it
Blue Color – This indicated that I was calm and encourage to participate in the activity. I was relaxed and felt I could do it at my own pace.
For the preceding activities, I decided to use images that could best visualize the specific act.
Pot: To illustrates that I had just spent some time in the kitchen cooking a meal
Pillow: To illustrates that I had just spent some time resting
Shower: To illustrates that I was bathing prior to engaging with my school activity
Soccer Ball: Illustrates engagement in some sporting activity in the garden
Findings from the visualization
From the visualization, I observed that over 80% of my activities were either perceived as self-initiated or encouraged. This says a lot about my learning in the sense that I tend to work better in a high spirit and relaxed space of mind. Also in terms of engagement duration, It was interesting to note that despite my high spirit, calm, and encouraging space for learning, the duration of activity was mostly under two hours. I only went over when it was extremely vital. I am curious as to whether this is as a result of my concentration span or level of satisfaction at the time of completion of an activity.
Possible metrics to measure in future
What are my emotional state at the beginning and the end of an activity? What is my level of satisfaction upon completion of a task and how my emotions influence this? How much of my learning activity is internet dependent?
3 replies on “Week 4 Visualization”
Hi Festus,
I like how your visualisation, and the discussion, illustrate just how complex this all is. Trying to track an activity can be challenging, but then there is trying to understand the reasoning behind it, your emotions, the outcomes… Where do you stop?
Neat dataviz. It looked to me like leaves springing from a plant. There might be a nice metaphorical angle to consider here — that data can keep proliferating from even a simple single stem, ultimately forming into a tangle of growth. I suspect that’s how learning analytics as a field is proceeding right now — it’s moving from collecting relatively simple indicators of learning, to a whole range of other related factors that are ‘proximal’ to learning. Practitioners in the field will argue this gives their analyses more depth, complexity and nuance. But I wonder also if it just makes ‘learning’ ever-more difficult to pin down and locate in the tangle.
There is a lot to consider when trying to track learning activities, isn’t there? Were you surprised that the majority was self-initiated or encouraged?