Observations!!

In class on Tuesday, we had to split up into groups of four and take turns observing and creating a response to a person's query. Aaron and I went first on creating the response. Vanessa and Erin observed. Then, we switched. This is where my observations come into play.

When we first began observing V and E, as I shall call them, A and I (again, I'm abbreviating!) were sitting right behind them. This seemed to make them uncomfortable with writing and thinking of topics to write about. A decided that we should move back a few feet, and when we did, V and E wrote three sentences. I'm not sure if the two are correlated, but it was quite funny.

Anyways, my observations greatly changed considering where I was sitting at the time. When I was right behind E, I couldn't really see what she was doing on the computer, but I could guess from what V was doing. Since A and I made V and E uncomfortable, I recorded a lot of the same things. My observing seemed to get better when I, too, was not right behind the girls.

Toward the end of V and E writing, I noticed that I wasn't taking as many notes as when we had started. A was not taking notes, but he seemed to pull more out of what occured than what I did with the notes I was taking. This leads me to believe that many data collecting methods might work better, or I should switch between them.

I found this exercise very informative. I think I learned a lot about "personal space" and how another's presence in that space affects the work being accomplished. I wouldn't mind doing this exercise again, although using different methods of data collection the next time.