Jennifer Brannigan
3/30/17
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 one cerulean blue wash. Blue being clarity, and my presence in the classroom. I originally put two colored washes, but didn’t plan of planning things out as far as background color in connection to what I actually graphed and collected in terms of data.On top of these ink washes, I started to make a different rectangular marks for each one of the sections. After I completed these marks, I went back and created dots around these marks. Each dot represents the number or class that each student is on. For example, one ring= freshman, four=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.

One thought on “Visualization 1-redo

  1. Jenn,

    Thanks for this second iteration of this visualization. I find your intentionality to add to the clarity of this and your understanding from it. I wonder if you would be able to determine this information from students drawing exercises using the questions in a similar manner to complete the drawing and then classify them in the particular categories – then you would see if there was any mis-categorizations between what students do and what they think they know.
    Kevin

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