Directions: Conducting grounded theory style coding of 4 of Honors College ePortfolios (as assigned). Read through and look for themes and trends. Identify 3-5 themes/trends; try to define/describe each based on your examples. Code all your examples using your identified themes/trends.

The nature of the assignment was a little vague. While I know a little bit about coding due to my fiddling-around with WordPress in the past, I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do for this assignment – and I’m still not sure if what I did is what was requested, really. However, I went with my gut; here are the results.

I identified several trends throughout the documents in the folders. These include:

1. Documents created by students and documents created by instructors greatly differed in tone and style. Instructors focused on conveying a layout of the course or of certain concepts; the documents were very roundabout and, at least to me, indirect. Students’ documents, meanwhile, tended to be more personal and more direct.
2. Students and instructors are big fans of Times New Roman… why?!!
3. They’re also quite fond of black-and-white design – it gets the point across, and grade-school materials have accustomed students to black-and-white design.
4. English instructors made “better” use of white space and incorporated better formatting on the whole – perhaps because they realize that composing a document involves more than throwing words onto pages so long as they come out as (barely) legible text?
5. Most documents are in Microsoft programs – only rarely did I come across PDFs.

Naturally, points 2, 3, and 5 exemplify the old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Of course, the notion of design and layout being either broken or unbroken is simplistic, as such a determination is entirely subjective and never set in stone.

But if we’re talking coding students, I noticed certain trends that tend to group students together. For instance…

• F14 – All students took classes during the Fall 2014 semester.
• 1**E – All students took a lower-level English class at the 100 level in either Fall 2014 or Spring 2015 or in both semesters.

I also noticed patterns that differentiate students. Like…

• M14 – Three students listed a math course during the Fall 2014 semester.
• M15 – Two students listed math courses for Spring 2015.
• CA – Two students had folders for undergraduate research and/or creative activities.
• W – Three students identify as women.
• M – One student identifies as a man.

Therefore, my coding of the students is as follows:

• JSm – W, F14, 1**E, M14, CA
• MW – W, F14, 1**E, M14, CA
• KB – W, F14, 1**E, M14, M15
• CD – M, F14, 1**E, M15

Instructions (beginning of class): Warm-Up: Go read 2-3 classmates journals entries about coding. Focus on what they discuss in terms of process. What did someone else do differently from you? What do you wish you had done differently, why? Add to your own entry.

One classmate coded students with the disciplines listed in their folders and with extracurricular activities (sports is the only extracurricular activity listed in the doc). Another classmate used the following criteria to code students: gender, whether their folders included academic materials (all), whether they’d listed extracurricular activities, and whether they had listed awards. Another classmate did not necessarily code the students, but rather determined what kind of (HTML, literally subtextual) coding would be incorporated into a website that contains these documents.

Now, to add to my own entry…

Brainstorming questions that raise from these folders…

1. Which students put the most effort into the archiving assignment?
2. Which subjects are students most interested in?
3. Looking at which classes overlap, contrast with interests…
4. Why the adherence to Microsoft files and black-and-white layout of documents? (Well, we know the answer, but…)