Ethnography Ideas

Some of the potential ideas I have for the ethnography project follow:

1. Observe how lap top users spend their time during class when they have their lap tops in use. I'm sure I am not the only one who has noticed that many people bring their lap tops to class, but these machines are not always used for doing things that are relevant to class. I thought it would be an interesting idea to observe how the machines are being used and to what frequency. For instance, it would be interesting to determine how many people are playing games in class and what types of games are they playing.

2. Observe how many people bring their textbooks to class. It seems that most people, myself included, tend to leave their text books at home instead of bringing them to school. I find that it is a lot of extra weight to be carrying around campus, especially considering all the walking that I find myself doing. I am also convinced that this is similar to the reasoning used by many other students. However, there are occasionally times where it is useful to bring them to campus, such as when you want to study right before a midterm or other exam. What I would find interesting to observe would be how many people seem to bring them on a regular basis.

3. Observe how many people are consistently late to class, on the order of at least one time a week. Most of the time there is some good reason, such as the distance that is needed to be traveled between classes. It's not always easy to have a business class on the west side of campus and have only twenty minutes to race over to the Bright building for a class in computer science. However, sometimes people just procrastinate getting to class for other reasons, such as tiredness. Regardless of reason, it seems an interesting proposition to observe those who are late to class and how they react when entering the class and finding a seat.

4. Observe the number of people actively taking notes during class. I have been on both sides of this issue. Sometimes it feels like copious amounts of notes are required and you find yourself writing a novel during the course of a single class. Other times you can go to class and find yourself feeling comfortable enough with the material that you might take next to nothing as far as notes for several class periods. The part of this that I would find interesting is finding out who is taking notes regularly and at least get an estimate as to how voluminous their notes seem to be for the class.