voyeurism

playing our part

i've added a few links in the navigation bar on the right, so that we can learn more about how to help with the tsunami relief efforts.

please do take some time to browse the sites.

t-tests

under john's advice, i've analysed the differences in performance between the pre- and post-tests by using paired-samples t-tests.

initially i used the wrong sort of t-test (one-sample t-test) and needless to say that went nowhere with the data :-P

spaced out #2

one by one the loose ends are being addressed.

it's a good feeling.

today i tackled another one of those tasks which i have been putting off for the longest time - this time, it was trying to make sense of and collate the sketch maps which the pupils were supposed to have returned to me as homework, after their orienteering tasks.

'supposed' is an accurate word to use, because as things turned out, of the twenty-eight orienteering sessions we eventually conducted for the three schools in the main study, i only received twelve complete sets of sketch maps (by complete, i mean a sketch map each from the leading and following pair, plus their aggregated map).

thank God the twelve complete examples were fairly evenly distributed - i have at least one example for each of the seven neighbourhoods, and at least three examples from each school :-)

so what i did today was i digitised them, rotated and cropped them, catalogued them and tried my best to match them with their original authors, then i tried to analyse them, looking for i know not what. for instance, i tried comparing the modalities evident from the sketch maps with those from the messaging transcripts. it turns out that both the unsuccessful lead pairs in the main study were relying on purely text-based mental maps, but on the other hand that may not mean much because there were examples of teams which were successful also by using text-based mental maps. there was also a case of four girls who generated entirely text-based mental maps, but then that was balanced by the case of four guys who did the same... sigh :-P

i've come to realise that there are at least three main ways in which the pupils elected to represent their maps - pure text, using arrows of single-line-width, and using conduit-like lines of greater width. not too sure what that means for classroom practice, though.

also, while i can understand that the maps produced in the field would have been rather messy, i found it interesting that there were at least two types of aggregated maps: those which were so geometric that they represented severe abstractions of reality, and those which closely mirrored the look-and-feel of the real world. that is not to say that all the aggregated maps were correct in terms of their orientation (let alone scale). speaking of scale, there was only one attempt to add a little bit of distance information into the aggregated map.

most of the additional waypoints inserted seemed to have been block numbers and street signs. there was also the interesting case of the girl who used crosses to depict 'paths-not-taken'. another girl used 'L' and 'R' to explicitly remind herself of the twists and turns in the route.

i had been putting this analysis off for several reasons: first, i knew the return-rate would be low. i also feared that i would not be able to match the maps to the pupils, thus rendering any analysis mostly meaningless. further, i have no formal training or experience in interpreting mental maps. and finally, because of the terrible rainy weather that we had had on some of the fieldtrips, i knew for a fact that some of the maps were in shreds and i just could not bear to take them out to touch them, lest they disintegrate further.

in the end, it was an exercise well worth the effort :-)

Technorati Tags: cognition, gender, geography, landmarks, maps, navigation, place, semiotics, wayfinding

l'arc en ciel

okie this is a follow-up to my earlier entry 'rounding the corner' :-)

since that post, i have completed twenty transcripts each of the pre- and post-tests (that's enough, according to john :-) ), i've beefed up the first results chapter and i'm waiting for feedback on that before moving on to the remaining one, i've included a discussion on how the peer critique sessions went, i've contacted a fellow geography teacher - Martin Chan - to conduct a peer review on the pupils' PowerPoints, and i've written the concluding chapter :-)  also, i've come up with a list that would comprise the Appendices, as well as completed transcribing the instructions given during the various briefings :-)

our thoughts today should be with the millions of families around the basin of the Indian Ocean who are grieving and who are trying to rebuild their lives, even as the aftershocks continue.  and let us remember the victims of the Bam earthquake too, which happened exactly a year ago to the hour, and in which at least 40000 people died, but received far less media attention.

may we pray that we do not have short memories.

the reason we celebrate

happy Christmas to all :-)

may the peace and joy of that first Christmas morning permeate your hearts and homes, and

may the love and hope that the Christchild brings be with each and every one of you.

Technorati Tags: Christianity

rounding the corner

had a meeting with john today.

clarified that we'll most likely include the transcripts as electronic files, not as printouts. also, no need to transcribe all the pre- / post-test recordings, thank God.

what do i need to do? i need to describe transparently how i coded the transcripts. i need to do an analysis on the movers and shakers between the pre- and post-tests. i need to connect the dots in the two 'results' chapters - currently they are just tables standing by themselves... not good. i need to talk a little more about how the peer critique sessions went (what went right and what went wrong) and also to make some value judgments about the various powerpoint files the pupils have submitted, and to get a peer review on those. also with regards the powerpoints, i need to analyse them with respect to the respective groups' performances during the Structured Academic Controversies.

i think, given the diverse nature of my research, it might be a good idea too to reiterate how the various bits all tie together. thinking about it, i would say the pre- / post-tests form the crux of what i am trying to investigate (and rightly so), with the two field activities as complementary sides of the intervention, with the peer critique and powerpoints as further documentation of the process and the 'final product representing what the pupils have learnt' respectively.

the other thing i did today (before my meeting with john) was to beef up the chapter on the discussion of the main data, by re-examining the original research questions and literature review.

spaced out

devised a simple index to aggregate each pupil's performance in the pre- and post-tests - a kind of at-a-glance score of spatial intelligence, if you like :-P

nothing fancy, but it works :-)

it helped me to decide which of the pre- and post-test recordings to transcribe.

breaking the drought

hallo hallo :-)

it has been two months' since my last entry :-P

i have been busy analysing the data from the main study. first, i had to code the transcripts, then i had to verify the coding against the scheme used in the pilot study. once that was done, i had to tally the codes for each session, then enter the tallies into the SPSS database file. once everything was digitised, i was finally able to run some statistical analyses, based on the patterns which surfaced during the pilot. finally, once these preliminary analyses were done, i wrote everything up into my draft :-)

it's all been terribly intense. now i know why some of my former students refer to a PhD as 'permanent head damage'.

the data is all preliminary, but so far there are no great surprises. in fact, in many ways, the data from the main study corroborates the data from the pilot. and thank God the sex ratios are much more balanced now :-)

one of the primary deviations from the pilot is the very high success rate of the orienteering task. i put that down to a much more detailed briefing about the do's and don't's of the task, based on the lessons learned during the pilot. no problems there, after all, that's what a pilot is for, to surface such issues.

as a result of the high success rate in the main study, i've had to use the discourse modes differently in the analyses. no longer do i examine the extent to which successful and unsuccessful pairs use different discourse modes. that would be meaningless because practically every pair in the main study was able to complete the orienteering task. instead i am looking at how the various categories of discourse modes (surfaced during the analysis of the pilot) correlate with the time taken to complete the orienteering task.

one other thing worthy of note at this point of time: john has provided me with two very interesting articles by Bidwell and her colleagues. these papers were apparently presented at last month's OZCHI, which is the annual conference of the Computer-Human-Interface Special Interest Group of the Ergonomics Society of Australia. the conference was held at Wollongong University on the theme of "Supporting Community Interaction: Possibilities and Challenges".  Bidwell describes a small study on the Ipswich Campus of the University of Queensland, in which pairs of 'pilots' and 'orienteers' asynchronously used printed photographs (and nothing else) to navigate various 360 metre routes. there are quite a few parallels to what i'm doing, including her use of instruments known as the Information Flow Charts (which are similar to my transcript tables) and the Contextual Information Maps (which are not too far from the peer-critique collages). Bidwell also introduced me to the quite valuable distinctions between various Frames of Reference, namely Egocentric, Allocentric and Extrinsic.

all in all i would say it has been two months' well spent :-)

Technorati Tags: maps, navigation, OZCHI2004, wayfinding