Week 11: Analogue Learning Analytics (Methodology & Results) (Part 1)

Unfortunately, I was unable to take part in the twitter activity because admittedly I was behind in the course. I had to deal with a lot of administrative matters because it was end of the semester at work and I was unwell for a fairly lengthy period.

I was able to attempt the ‘create a hand drawn visualisation’ activity. I found the activity to be quite insightful as it allowed me to think about and visualise the block’s core readings. This post focuses on the methodology and the data collected. My analysis of the data collected will be in the next post.

Work had toned down a little so I was able to put in (approximately) three hours of study each day, from Monday to Thursday. I’ve never been good at drawing. I actually dropped Art as an “O” level subject 3 months before the exam. Also, I had to take the AutoCad (a computer-aided design and drafting software) twice during my polytechnic days. Hence, I was a little apprehensive about this activity.

Methodology

Basically, I utilized a table (refer to Table 1) to note down the time I spent on activities and platforms for each day. These are:

Moodle (Learning Management System);
MyEd (University Management System) – I don’t know the exact term;
Google, Youtube – basically, sites that were not specifically academic;
Open Notes PDF reader and;
WordPress (Blog)

I would put a sweet, which I drew using my iPad, for every 15 minutes spent. This wasn’t exactly accurate, but it gave me a rough idea of how I utilized my time. I had set 15-minute timer intervals on my phone’s clock and took notes when I got a notification.

Table 1: Time spent on learning activities

Results

Monday

The first 45 minutes was spent on Moodle, trying to find out the tasks I needed to complete and readings for the week. I wasn’t actually learning anything. Most of the time, I was doing admin. The bulk of my time was spent reading the core readings and annotating them. This took about 1 hour and 45 minutes. I did try to search for terms I didn’t understand using Google or watching videos on Youtube that were relevant. I did, however, get a little distracted and watched the music video for the Farm’s Altogether Now.

Tuesday

Today, I did not log into Moodle at all. Half of my time (1.5 hours) was spent reading and planning for my blog posts. About 45 minutes was spent writing a very rough draft on WordPress. The rest of the time (30 minutes) was spent googling and Youtubing. Today, I wasn’t exactly distracted but I knew that 3 hours would be a long stretch. So, I had a 10 minute break where I was mindlessly bopping my head to more music videos.

Wednesday

Today was writing day. I started the session by logging in to Moodle for a short bit (15 minutes) to ensure that I was not barking up the wrong tree. Mainly, I just checked if there were any task that I needed to complete and what to focus my blog posts on. Half of my time (1.5 hours) was spent writing (or more accurately, typing). I did shuffle back and forth between writing and reading, so I estimate that 45 minutes was spent on Open Notes. No Youtube today, because I was in the zone and I managed to stay there. I did log into MyEd to use the library for 15 minutes.

Thursday

I’ve had too many long weeks. I knew I had to continue writing to ensure that I did not ruin my weekend. Hence, again, half of my time (1.5 hours) was spent on WordPress. As I knew the topic better, I spent a little less time (30 minutes) on Open Notes referring to the core readings. I did, however, search for and watched Youtube videos that could augment my posts and this took up (45 minutes) a considerable amount of time, inclusive of the Cure’s Pictures of You, Suede’s Beautiful Ones and Oasis’ Champagne Supernova. In my defence, the last two were playing in the background as I was writing. Nonetheless, this highlights how multi-tasking might make it difficult to determine how time is actually spent.