Jennifer Brannigan
2/19/17
Data Visualization
For this first data visualization, I decided to map visually my students understanding to the key concepts of two-point perspective and its key components. As a wrap up activity, I asked students to chart where they thought they might be in each category. The first category was vanishing points and the midway, i.e finding the center to where everything begins to pull back into space and to one of the vanishing points, the second was placing objects in a two dimensional space, and the third was the horizon line. For these three categories, students received three post-it notes. They were asked to initial the back, so that it would stay anonymous. Once they did this, they were asked to one post-it note under each category. They had three options for this also. The first- I understand this 100 percent, the second- I understand some of this, 75 percent, and the third- I really don’t understand this at all, less than 50 percent. Students charted themselves on their own personal bias, and they were asked to be honest so that I could better help them.
Once students mapped their post-it notes, I took them down section by section and listed their names so that I could see where everyone was feeling confident, or not understanding what we had been doing. This was for my own personal data collection and use, and it helped me better understand the key concepts that I had to re-teach for the next couple days.
For the actual visualization, I started with layering two colors of inks, one a cerulean blue, and the other a red iron oxide. I picked these two colors because I felt as though they were fitting for the ideas that surrounded this data. Blue being clarity, red being the uncertainty that students felt during this process. I washed both inks under the faucet in my apartment so that they would mix with one another, and create a misty or cloudy like quality. My thought behind this, was that even the students who marked themselves at 100 percent for all of the sections, still struggled, even slightly, with the application of these concepts. On top of these ink washes, I started to make a different looped mark for each one of the sections. After I completed these marks, I went back and created either a ring, or a dot around these marks. Each ring represents the number or class that each student is on. For example, four rings= freshman, one=senior.
With this visualization, I was able to see that my sophomores, except for one student all understood the three concepts at 100 percent. Which tells me that they way that I teach, or the way that they understand what I am teaching are almost perfectly aligned. My freshman were mostly in the 100 percent to 75 percent range. I had only two students under “ placing objects in a two dimensional space” say that they didn’t understand this concept at all. One student has a 504 plan, and the other has an IEP. 
Hi Jenn,
This is an interesting conception of students understanding. I appreciate your coding process in tandem with colorization. I also appreciate your clear statement, intent, and outcomes from doing this work. I do have a few questions/suggestions: 1) What does the dot signify? 2) Did you purposely align your mark-coding system over the color-bleed or was that more randomly organized? – it appears to suggest that there are more students in the ‘red’ then blue which would suggest that there was more uncertainty then suggested in your analysis. Consider this part of the process less chance organized and more intentionally designed. Is there an inbetween marking as well where the red and blue blend? This would suggest students that have partial understanding. Also wondering if you could push this further with more particular questioning about the 2 point process that gets further nuanced data to visualize? It seems you pointed out 3 categories “finding the center to where everything begins to pull back into space and to one of the vanishing points, the second was placing objects in a two dimensional space, and the third was the horizon line” – could there be more – also could you imagine a written statement that asks them to respond/reflect on their understanding and then code the findings – meaning determine how many times a particular word or idea is mentioned and then visualize the commonalities and then highlight the anomalies as well? These ideas are just meant to pique your continued interest in this type of data collection and anaylsis – visualization. You are on an interesting tack with this work – keep pursuing these lines of thinking – inquiry.
Kevin
The dots represent the amount of years or grades that the students have in their high school career. I’m going to code my next batch of data using the perception of their community sheet which was attached to my research that I emailed to you. Next time, I will plan out the color with more than just chance so that it adds another layer to see/visualize for this data.