monika’s w e b l o g

The homepage of Leeds Metropolitan University provides an area called “Daily Reflections”. In principle a nice idea: all members of the university are invited to contribute their reflections in various areas, for instance research reflections, assessment, learning and teaching, etc. – the chance for a glance into the institution and their people. Makes you think of blogs, right?

My study colleague has contributed a post as well as myself.

Unfortunately though, there is no RSS Feed (resp. just for the VC), and the rigid categories and day-by-day posting take away much of the spontaneity and instant.

Room for improvement, however i like the idea and effort taken.

April 1st, 2009. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: visualisation|presentation. .

Last week I visited Leeds Metropolitan University together with my study colleagues. Besides meeting our supervisors, we all had the chance to participate at the Mini Conference on March 24.

My presentation was about “How can Aspects of Informal Learning through Blogging be Measured?”. And is a work in progress on my recent struggling with the vast field of learning. Sorting ideas about informal and incidental learning (where definitions diverge a lot), their classification into the learning theories, models of learning to ground empirical research, limitations of learning models, etc.

The presentation is available as PDF.

March 29th, 2009. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: conferences, visualisation|presentation. .

After a long time, I’d like to link to another online image editing tool: SUMO Paint.
A really nice alternative to desktop image editing. If you are familiar with professional image editing tool(s), you find your way through the interface immediately. Two things I did particularly like:
(1) Even with a relatively slow internet connection, the program worked smooth on my computer;
(2) It is possible to create a picture and save it on the local computer without having to create an account. But of course that is also possible (with storing the files on the SUMO server).

(Found through Design Tagebuch)

February 3rd, 2009. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: visualisation|presentation. .

A great tool to visualise my thoughts and concepts in the PhD-process is the concept mapping tool VUE:

“The Visual Understanding environment (VUE) is an Open Source project based at Tufts University. The VUE project is focused on creating flexible tools for managing and integrating digital resources in support of teaching, learning and research. VUE provides a flexible visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information.”

and

“VUE provides a concept mapping interface, which can be used as such, or as an interface to organize digital content in non-linear ways.”
(Cited from the project website, 1 and 2.)

I have tried a few mind mapping software tools in the past. I always experienced limits – in the arrangement of nodes, in the possible (multiple) links among them, in the labeling, etc.
This is the first tool which provides the flexibility I need – multiple nodes and links can be created and arranged freely, still in a very intuitive way. Since it is not a strict mindmapping tool (in the sense of a center node having always to be linked to all subnodes), but a concept mapping tool, it offers more freedom in hirarching and linking. Have not tried out the presentation feature yet but it sounds promising.

(Source: screenshots from the project website)

January 29th, 2009. von Administrator. (2) Comments.
Kategorie: visualisation|presentation. .

Andrea Back pointed to this website in her Learning Waves:
wordle.net “is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.”
It reminds me a bit about the Webpages-as-Graph-Creating tool which appeared a few years ago, a java applet as well.
Then, like now, it is fascinating to watch how my blog posts transform into visual representations of content or links.
Then, like now, I think about possible uses of such graphics. At the end, every representation is subject to programmer’s priorities.
Is it simply that in heavily text-based research we need, every once in a while, a “visual escape”? Or do these tools point to visualisation possibilities where one could translate a whole research into graphical representations? Imagine you visualise a mixed methods research approach, key features of each approach, interrelationships between them, and later on even the collected data and their interrelationships…. Sounds exciting doesn’t it…

However, I’ve tried the tool with my weblog. This led to the software upgrade, because suddenly all kinds of (otherwise hidden) spamwords appeared in the graphic instead of the contents I thought…
A tool to discover hidden spam messages?

July 15th, 2008. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: visualisation|presentation. .

Found on bildungstechnologie.net: the link to Visual Literacy, a collective project of four universities which provides
“an online leveling course as well as a blended skill-building course for students of fourteen different university courses (…) . With the Visual-Literacy.org online tutorial, professors and teachers can flexibly revert to an important resource whenever a course relies on conceptual visualization competence.”

Since I have not found yet many resources of visual representation in research contexts, I appreciate the approach of this project. I like the exercises, although I put to discussion whether they provide enough freedom for developing new ideas and concepts of representation (do you have to break out into different contexts to open up for new inputs etc.).

Anyway, immersing myself into studying this site, I have found the visualisation method of the decision tree diagram, with links to various images which drew back the line to my actual data analysis – ethnographic decision tree modeling:

“There are two distinctive features about the method (…): its reliance on ethnographic fieldwork techniques to elicit the decision criteria, and its insistence on a formal, testable, computerbased model of the decision process which is hierarchical or treelike in nature.”
Gladwin, C.H. (1989) Ethnographic Decision Tree Modeling. SAGE Publications. p.8.

(this one is called venn|euler diagram )

October 22nd, 2007. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: research methodology, visualisation|presentation. .

Nice way of presenting a conference programme, isn’t it? Super clear, at a glance.
Could just be topped by being interactive…

June 15th, 2007. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: conferences, visualisation|presentation. .

While I am preparing my presentation for the FRC, I am looking at some presentation videos of last years INN Faculty Research Conference.
Mark Fabri (with David Moore) talkes about “Instant messaging: beyong smiley faces“. What I really like about this presentation is how he introduces to the research theme: he starts on a common ground by showing some of these optical-illusion-graphics along with the question “How do people – how do YOU – see things and experience them?”, and interacts with the audience.
From there, he leads over to smiley graphics/emoticons. Just then he sets the theoretical framework of the research, presents the project (a virtual messenger with animated characters) and talks about the research results.

June 30th, 2006. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: visualisation|presentation. .

I am opening a new category today: visualisation and presentation.
In the large field of research, I think that design plays an important role for the communication of thoughts, data, research results, etc., but is often neglected. Perhaps it helps to actively think and collect examples of good design…

(I am adding older posts to this category as well)

June 30th, 2006. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: visualisation|presentation. .

Erwin Bratengeyer arranged this meeting as a preparation for the INN Faculty Research Conference. We discussed “Conference presentations: best practice, to do’s and not to do’s”.
It was a good discussion: I have seen many well and bad designed PPT-slides before, and I know many “PPT-rules”, but to apply this knowledge in your own presentation, is still a challenge.
Besides, it was good to meet my student colleagues again.

June 24th, 2006. von Administrator. No Comments.
Kategorie: seminars, visualisation|presentation. .