Opt-In/Out Experiment: Reading Club
As an experiment, I’d like to offer an optional “reading club” as an opportunity for students to collaborate (asynchronously) around some of the readings.
Action item: by Friday, tell us if you want to participate using the survey: Reading Discussion 1: Opt-In for Reading Discussion 1 (Eyes Have It) (due Fri, Sep 19).
The idea: to help you (students who opt in) read some of the readings of the class, and to get practice at “reading” (and learning from) academic papers more generally, we will organize online discussions of one paper a week. If you opt in, you will be expected to write a response to an initial prompt, and to have an online discussion with a small group of people (in a Canvas discussion).
You can choose whether or not you want to participate. Ideally, we will let you choose each week (we’ll see how practical that is). For now, you are just signing up for this one week.
The idea: by Monday (in this case, September 22), you will have read the paper and you will make a posting to an initial prompt. For the rest of the week, you will have a discussion with the small group about your responses - with some extra discussion fuel provided by the course staff giving extra prompts.
The timing: respond to the survey Reading Discussion 1: Opt-In for Reading Discussion 1 (Eyes Have It) (due Fri, Sep 19) by end-of-day Friday, we’ll form/announce groups with the volunteers over the weekend, and you will make your first posting on Monday.
This is some extra work, which is why we are making it opt in. The readings are already required, but writing/discussing (and reading others’ responses) is not. We think that you will benefit from doing it. We want you to opt in because you want the learning opportunity - not because you want extra credit.
However, for the first go around, we will give a “small” reward for those who participate (a point or two on the content survey for the week). But - you will be accountable. If you do not follow through (and make the initial posting on time, and participate in some discussion), we will take away a point.
Action item: please fill out the survey as to whether you want to participate or not. Participation is voluntary: but would like you to explicitly say that you want to be part of it or not: Reading Discussion 1: Opt-In for Reading Discussion 1 (Eyes Have It) (due Fri, Sep 19)
The “reading club” is different than the “collaborative learning opportunities” which are tied to the design exercises. (coming soon)
This week’s details:
The paper for this discussion is from the Module 3 reading list: Ben Shneiderman. The eyes have it: a task by data type taxonomy for information visualizations. Proceedings of the 1996 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages (pp. 336–343). (doi) (url) .
How this will work: by the “initial due date” (Monday, Sep 22), you should have read the paper. Make an initial posting (a few sentences) responding to this question:
What do you think the key lessons of this (historical) paper are in the context of class? What should we (as readers trying to learn visualization practice) take away from it - 30 years later.
Keep this in mind as you read the paper: This is an unusual, historical paper. A famous senior person is giving his opinions and perspectives - it’s not the typical research paper. The style is informal, and the ideas lack some of the rigor and complexity that has been added over the 30 years since.
After you post your initial response to that prompt, you will get to see all the others’ responses. We (the course staff) will also provide some additional prompts.