Provisional Answers: Analysis

Gibson is always good.

Pattern Analysis

Load the following:

• Essential Questions and Provisional Answers

That should show you the complete set of responses to the essential questions given to you in our last post. If it doesn’t work, let me know in the comments or in person, and I’ll see what I can do to flip a PDF of the responses.

Your assignment: Read your peers’ responses, identify patterns, and offer insight into the collective thinking for each question.

If we break that sentence down, you have three things to do:

1. Read your peers’ responses.
2. Identify patterns in those responses.
3. Write down something insightful about those responses.

This kind of pattern analysis needs a lot of data to work well, and you’ll have it: more than 100 students will have given provisional answers to seven essential questions. The obvious problem? You have to read 700 responses.

Speed Reading

Actually, you don’t need to read 700 responses. First, there won’t be 700 responses; we’ll be using what we have at different points over the next few days. Second, you only need to read enough responses to identify a meaningful pattern. You are meant to skim your peers’ writing. This is also a time to practice your reading speed — how quickly you can push through a wall of text while still understanding what it says.

You should apply your regular metacognition to this speed-reading to see how your brain handles it. Note which questions generated responses that you find interesting, too. You should even start to see patterns in the writing itself — in the use of specifics, the development of ideas, the repetition of phrases, and so on.

If you have questions about how to approach the assignment, ask them below. Otherwise, bring your observations and insights to Google+ and group discussions in class.