One of the things I looked for when doing my observations was the way that students interacted with each other. Now that I have completed my observations, I have made note of several categories related to student interaction.
During my observations, I noticed that a lot of groups of students utilize the computer labs to work on class projects. One of the lab guidelines is that students working on group projects should use the back of the lab so that they do not disturb the other lab users. However, when the labs are busy, which they often are, students have to take whichever computers are open, regardless of their location. Because of this, I rarely noticed groups using just the back of the lab. Often, each group member used a separate computer, unless there were not enough available. This allowed the group to have more than one document or Web site up at once, making it easier for them to complete different sections of the project. Another thing I noticed about these groups is that they tended to have conversations that were louder than students who were not working together on something. This observation likely has to do with the fact that group members need to interact to be able to move forward on the project, and this requires discussion and debate. Often, these group members received looks from other students, suggesting that their level of conversation was distracting. Also, it seemed that after an initial twenty to thirty minutes of work, the groups would begin to get off-track and start having conversations of a personal nature rather than discussing the project. This social atmosphere is something I noticed in all of the labs.
One observation I made was related to the number of people that were in the labs at one time. As I expected, the more students that were in the lab, the more conversation that took place. This pattern was especially true for computer lab 2, which seemed to be consistently busy. Computer 1, on the other hand, was usually the quietest lab, despite being the lab with the most available computers. This could be because this lab is located on a lower level of the building, which could be inconvenient for some students. Also, the building in which the lab is located does not house general classrooms; therefore, many students do not use it on a regular basis. In computer lab 1, when students entered the lab alone, they were most likely to pick an area of the lab that was not occupied by other students. So not only was there little conversation going on (expect when there were groups of students working on a project), but most students did not seem interested in interacting at all. In the other two labs, there were often only a few computers open; therefore, incoming students had little choice about who they sat next to.
Next week, I will continue to discuss general patterns that I noticed over the course of my observations. These reflections will be helpful for me as I write the findings and discussion sections of my ethnography.
