work/space

Thanks to everyone who has responded to the Workspace survey. The data so far is fascinating and wide ranging. I'll keep the survey online for the next several weeks in case anyone else wants to participate.

In early January, I'll revise and re-launch the survey to reflect any interesting issues that emerge from early analysis of the data. It struck me that the survey might be a useful start-of-semester exercise for writing/design classes, as a way to get your students to talk about the diversity of ways they structure their work, and about how writing/design might fit into those structures. (I'm planning on including this exercise in the first-year comp textbook I'm currently working on.

Although I'd be glad for more student input on the survey, If you don't want to require your students to participate in the research feel free to download the questions and just distribute/discuss them locally with your class rather than ask them to submit their results to me. I can also email you the questions in a Word or PDF document if you like.

Posted by johndan at 11:55 PM | Permalink

Update: Hold off on completing the survey for now. I've gathered a handful of responses, and there's what appears to be a minor bug in how one section of the data is written. I'll try to chase the specifics down and fix it in the next day or so. If you've already completed the survey, thanks much. I can still use the data you submitted, but it involves moving cells in Excel around by hand to compensate for the bug, so I want to avoid having too much additional data written until I fix it.

After I address the glitch, I'll re-post the survey and open it to wider participation.

I'm beta testing a survey on workspaces that asks participants to provide me with information about how they interact with and construct the spaces they work within. This isn't ready for broad dissemination yet—so don't post the URL to lists or discussion boards or ask classes full of your students to fill it out—but if you're interested in helping me out and have 15 minutes or so to spare, you can take the survey between now and early next week. (You can spend more than 15 minutes answering the questions if you like, but 15 minutes should be enough to get you through the main survey.)

The survey includes (a) an anonymous three-part section with open-ended and multiple-choice questions about your computer setup and the physical spaces around it as well as (b) a non-anonymous portion that asks you to send me screenshots and/or digital pictures of your workspace (and opportunities for followup questions via email later). You can fill out either section, or both, depending on how much time you have to put into this.

If you have feedback on the survey itself (things you like/hate/etc.), you can either email them to me directly at johndanseven@gmail.com or by posting comments here on the weblog.

Once I've beta-tested the survey, I'll make any adjustments necessary and then post a message here to announce it's wider availability, if you'd like to pass my request for input on to a wider audience.

Thanks.

Posted by johndan at 10:26 PM | Permalink