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0.1 Diversity harnessing questions, answers, and usage (sample set  (Page 3/4)

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The last item (which mentions "data", "decision making" and "weather forecast") appears tainted by the course notes which are available in advance of the lecture. I accept the fact that this will sometimes occur. I suspect that students who are engaged enough to read lecture notes ahead of the lectures contribute to the class discussions in other ways besides the Diversity Harnessing method. That is to say, they are probably not the students who need the extra effort for engagement in the materials!

Summary of answers : In the next class, I was able to report that most students associate information with knowledge and the transferal of that knowledge. The knowledge itself pertains to any concrete or abstract thing, but the most common examples are concrete such as demographic information or electronic files. Interesting statements include that even "false" information is still information and that information can be conveyed to/from animals as well as humans. It can also be used to “do a job.”

This naturally leads to discussions about what information is necessary to make an informed decision. What information is unnecessary? I typically ask the students about a jury who must make an informed decision regarding the guilt or innocence of the accused. I also discuss whether material irrelevant to this decision might be introduced during the trial and what purpose it might serve. Now, the students' answers provide additional fuel for discussion. Now new questions can be derived from the students responses above...

If I type ``What is the weather in Urbana Illinois'' into a search engine, does the search criteria treat every word with equal importance? Why or why not?

Answer 1

Of course, you want the students to discuss and propose answers, but you should expect the discussion to focus on more important words like "weather", "Urbana", and "Illinois". Words like "the" probably appear in most searches and carry little importance. The word "what" might be a bit more disputed with regards to its importance, but I would argue that it might guide us to a page where the material is prepared as an answer to a question and may be better directed to what we desire.

Many of us get information from newspaper articles or RSS feeds. Consider power from wind turbines which has gotten a lot of attention locally. What is your opinion of the construction of wind turbines in the area? What information have you read? What information did you find most relevant in making your decision? Least relevant?

Answer 2

It is difficult to anticipate answers here or even to know how familiar students may be with this particular issue. It might have been better to have included in the DH question a request for specific information they obtained recently and gear this question around that.

Other points

A couple of students hinted at the representation or “quantization” of information in some type of symbols: “Characters (letters, numbers, symbols) arranged in a way so as to render them significant, intelligible, and transmittable between more than one entity.”
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Source:  OpenStax, Diversity harnessing: content personalization for engaging non-stem students in stem topics. OpenStax CNX. Jun 21, 2013 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11439/1.8
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