5/20 Weekly Commentary

Within the last week, I feel like our Augmented Learning Group has been able to get a better grasp on what needs to be done. Our group met five days this week; in the beginning it was to prepare for our 10-minute presentation and then we went back to working on our contextual design.

To be honest, our presentation was a disappointment. It seems like everything that the professor warned us might go wrong, actually did go wrong. We had a rocky start with technical difficulties, and I think it threw off our entire presentation. Our 10-minute presentation was a poor reflection on the real status of our group at this point in the quarter. The powerpoint that we were unable to show would have given a better portrayal of the hard work put into our contextual design thus far. However, it seems like we used this minor setback as a motivation to work even harder.

We were able to finish up our 13 contextual interviews, create an affinity wall, and begin consolidation. Personally, I enjoyed the process of creating the affinity wall. Each of us wrote affinity notes on post its and organized them on the wall in groups. I do not think that we have finalized the affinity wall yet, but even at this stage it has helped to clarify trends and differences amongst our 13 interviews. Our affinity wall has been a useful tool for us to understand how each aspect of studying is important and must be taken into consideration. I know that a large concern has been that our scope is too wide for this quarter's project, but it would be incomplete if we did not take every observation into account. For example, a student might not understand a concept and she does not go to section because she does not find the TA to be helpful and the section time conflicts with her work schedule. She is also not aware of other office hours because she doesn't know the available times since they are not posted on the class website. Therefore, she uses the resources of her classmate to answer her questions during a study session (Group 3). This is an example of our users and the wide range of influences that we must consider, and that we cannot cut out a part of it since each part may be dependent on another. We also became much more organized as we began the process of consolidation this week while sorting through each interview and finding the gaps that needed to be filled.

Though not fully updated, much of our information is up on our wiki site (http://learningredesign.pbwiki.com/). Natan had the excellent idea of creating this site, and within this week our group has been able to post some contextual interviews. Though it is still under construction, I think that this site will be helpful to us as it becomes more complete.

In this following week, we need to finalize our affinity wall and complete our consolidation process. I think the last few meetings have been effective and we have been able to accomplish a great amount; we need to continue at this pace in order to optimize our last few weeks with the project. Hopefully we will be able to visualize and prototype by the end of this coming week.

Individual work is important for the success of our team, and I know each member of the team has put in their best efforts. At this point, I feel like our personal weekly commentaries should be about the status of the group, since I assume that each of us has put in our share to contribute to how much we have accomplished so far. For a while, it seemed like we were at a standstill, but now it feels like the ball is finally in motion and I look forward to seeing the results of this project.