Seeing Is Believing . . . Or Is it?

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How many times have you sat at a public table and looked around? Probably a lot. But were you observing or seeing your surroundings? In an observation assignment, we were each tasked with spending 30 minutes in the cafeteria, observing fellow students interacting with technology and writing down our observations on cards.

After comparing the results in class, here are five interesting things I took away from this activity:

1. There's a difference between seeing and observing. In this exercise, some observations were detailed and others were generic. When you're observing something, you're taking a more in-depth look at something compared to when you're simply seeing it. The uneven results that came in from observing versus seeing made grouping the observations into categories extremely challenging.


2. Recording observations takes time. I found that after 30 minutes, I didn’t have as many different observation cards as I would’ve liked because of the amount of detail I wanted to include on each one. If I was reliant on only my set of cards, I would've needed to spend much more time in the cafeteria in order to get a decent-sized pool of data.


3. The purpose of making observations is to identify patterns. Therefore, the more data that can be collected, the easier it will be to validate patterns because you can see just how frequently the characteristic appears.


4. Don’t be afraid to record everything, even things that may seem insignificant at the time. “Insignificant” observations may become more significant if it becomes clear that the occurrence is not a one-off item. You won't be able to determine this until you see all the data laid out in front of you.


5. Be mindful of the difference between observations of fact and opinions based on observations. There is a fine line between data and conjecture. To be completely accurate, it’s best to record what you see rather than what you think you see because that opens the way for biases to be introduced.

When we laid out all of our cards (physically and metaphorically), we could see that there wasn't enough data to make an accurate pattern emerge. We now have another opportunity to collect observations again, and hopefully, we'll be able to identify some patterns with students and their interaction with technology. If not, I guess it'll be back to the cafeteria for us.