Amy Stephens’ Weblog

So our project is moving along quite nicely and we are now at the stage of completing our research methods triangulation for our design research proposal. We have sent out an online survey which has gotten 95 responses already which is great. From this research method we hope to gather information on ways in which people/students employ to help them retain information (such as writing notes etc) and also on whether they would find a memory retention device a beneficial study aid.

Our second research method we are completing this week is an ethnographic study on students participating in a 1 hour lecture. We will watch and record how many students are writing notes, typing on laptops, using dictaphones to record the sound, illustrating or even those who are doing unrelated activities such as texting or snoozing which shows they do not retain any information from the lecture at all. At the end of the lecture we will be asking them to quickly jot down/sketch 3-5 things they remember from the lecture. This will show us how much information  and more importantly what information is retained within minutes of the lecture finishing and also what methods (diagrams, keypoints, keywords) most people use when remembering the information. We will then compare these results to another lecture in which we will notify the participants at the beginning of the lecture that they are required to jot down/sketch 3-5 things during the lecture. This will be in contrast to the results received from the students who were asked to complete the task after the lecture had finished. We will post the results as soon as they have been collected and analyzed.