Eager to learn something new, and find the theme of this week's topic, I dove into Brenda Dervin's article, From the Mind's Eye of the User: The Sense-Making Qualitative-Quantitative Medthodology, and a few pages later I found myself going in circles, trying to make sense of what I was reading. I continued marking the text and writing the gist on the side margins of the little information I was understanding. I understood, that sense-making is a methodology used to focus on human behaviors and to better help them and meet their needs. As I was reading, I kept connecting this methodology to sellers and consumers? This connection could have been due to the fact that I spent my weekend watching a Breaking Bad marathon with my husband? But then I got into thinking of me, the teacher as the seller, and my students as the consumers. They come to me with questions, and I try to close that gap by communication and offering tools that will make their situation a more pleasant one and one in which they will receive what they need.
After a while my light bulb turned on and I decided to click on the link of resources to understand sense-making. The video talked about Darvin's article and explained some of the key elements using graphics and bullet points. Through the video I was able to better understand the sense-making triangle and see the situation gap more clearer. How when we "the helper" ask questions, we tend to start from our world, and not from theirs, thus making it harder for them to close that situation gap. As I was trying to understand the different kinds of sense-making interviews and how through these different surveys: satisfaction survey, image survey, help chain survey, and message/Q survey, we can discover the barriers, questions of confusion, and the strategies the person used to arrive to an answer, I couldn't stop thinking about "Apple" products and their service and how every time I called with a troubleshooting question or anytime I went into the genius bar, I always felt like my needs were met. Again, it was all about sense-making and putting themselves in the shoes of the consumer or the actor instead of the observer as Darvin puts it. I think there is a connection with the surveys and collecting qualitative data, but I wish to understand that a little deeper. I hope that with my cohort and our discussions, I will be able to make more connections with what I read and saw in the video. I feel that Darvin's readings of the concept of sense-making is very hard to understand. I feel that presenting a situation or scenario first, kind of like the one Darvin explained in the video about not understanding the computer sales rep would serve as a little bridge and help students make smother connections as they read. In the end, I think its all going to come together and we will be able to understand that sense-making is just making sense of what one cannot see,
3 Comments
Lisa Gottfried
2/5/2018 06:31:49 pm
"it was all about sense-making and putting themselves in the shoes of the consumer or the actor instead of the observer as Darvin puts it. " I came from the sales profession and I sometimes think that teaching is all about sales, in the end. So is parenting! Understanding our students is where we need to start which means relationship based learning can inform everything we do.
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Diana Olguin
2/5/2018 06:32:21 pm
I, also had no idea what I was reading. I'm glad you told me to view the video, before continuing to read Dervin's article. It made the rest of the article easier to read. I like how you made the connection between the teacher's role as the seller and meeting the students' needs as the consumers. I hope our cohort and the instructor can bring deeper understanding of sense-making and qualitative data.
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Jeff Albertazzi
2/6/2018 09:52:46 pm
Totally agree that those successful in sales are those that are successful in understanding the consumers needs and how to close the gap for each individual consumer. Which is an itself, is an individual situation. I too am still confused with the reading. I watched a video on youtube of her giving a talk , it was long but I think it helped me with the reading. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foyH6eoIseQ&t=2029s
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