Week 2 Reflection: Interpretation Phase

The above image is a screenshot of the collaborative mural my team created to help us visually represent our data and organize our ideas.


The Interpretation Phase for Team 3ST was a bit more condensed and dense than our Discovery Phase in that once we had all of our data from experts and end users we just had to wade through it and try to make sense of it.  We did this by putting all of our information onto our shared Google Doc and spending some time looking through it asynchronously. We held several Google Hangouts during which we talked about our findings and discussed what we saw.  We began a Google Drawing to begin to visually represent our information, but quickly found that tool to be clunky and difficult to maneuver.  Sara put out a Tweet to her PLN asking for suggestions for tools that might help us with our end goal of having Post Its with pieces of data that could be maneuvered and grouped.  From that she received the suggestion to use mural.ly, and that tool worked out very well.  It was intuitive and easy to learn.  So began the process of transferring our information to mural.ly and continuing to add to that new creation.  Once we had all of the information added, we reconvened for a Hangout during which we talked aloud about what we were noticing as trends in our data and began to group those ideas together at the bottom of our mural.  That process took a bit of time, but was highly informative.  This is another spot in the process where I felt so grateful to be working together collaboratively because with four different perspectives adding to the conversation, our groupings went through several transformative iterations that could not have happened so richly without the synergy between us all.  The last thing we did was to go through the QFT process and develop three overall questions that emerged out of our groupings.  This was our first time using this process, and I’d say we would have felt more confident having one of our professors present to guide us through, but I think we did ok.  We reached out to Dr. Ward and Professor Leu to ask for feedback, as we weren’t sure our QFT questions were on point.  I have to say I fully enjoyed this part of the process and the depth of conversation and exchange of ideas we all shared.
Here is a link to our collaborative mural created using mural.ly.

My individual contributions for the Interpretation Phase were pretty much the same as everyone else’s. I looked at gathered data with my group, participated in several lengthy Google Hangout sessions, collaborated, shared, added information I gathered during the interview with Dr. Ward to our mural, helped to group our ideas together, and ultimately brainstorm ideas for and complete our project for Phase 3 of the Interpretation Phase, which is our video portraying our group’s story so far.  I’d say this week my team members took on a few more tasks than I did.  Sara has been fantastic about organizing and reorganizing our information on our shared Google Doc, as this process gets messy!  :)  Jose, Matthew, and Sara have started and shared documents with the group.  Again, Team 3ST is rock solid when it comes to teamwork.

Our challenges were also pretty much the same for our team as with the Discovery Phase.  We are always feeling pressed for time and challenged with location, as of course it would be easier to communicate if we could just sit at the same table together and chat.  But technology is awesome and allows us to push past that challenge and get the job done.

If I were going through this phase of the process with colleagues at my school site I would make sure that I tried out the collaboration tool ahead of time and have it set up and ready to go when we met, so as to keep the frustration level down and have a smoother collaboration process. I would also hope that the collaboration could be done with everyone in the same room if possible as opposed to meeting virtually to discuss.   If I wanted to use the QFT process I would have to front load that process with some teaching and videos ahead of time, and most likely have one  meeting session dedicated specifically to our QFT process.  Everything else I would do the same as how our group did it.  Our process worked well.

There were many tenets of critical thinking present in our process.  We were for sure open-minded and practiced deferred judgment, along with healthy skepticism.  When a suggestion was made during any part of our process, it was always immediately on the table as an option, but not ultimately decided on until we went through any questions that arose regarding the why? how? or but what about? of our process and proposals.  We all definitely approached and continue to work through this topic with ultimate empathy, humility and reflection.  The most growth potential I think for us all is in our metacognitive thinking and the sharing of that thinking with the group.  I’m sure we are all going through our own internal process even as we engage in action as a group, and as new concepts are revealed individually to each of us, I don’t know if we fully shared that, as many times these internal process revealings happen when we are not together, and we may not remember to share what we are learning personally.

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