3.2. Freqeuncies with WordCounter (DataBasic)

WordCounter is another DataBasic tool that allows for basic, brief data analysis--in this case, generating word frequencies. I wanted to use WordCounter because I thought it would be helpful to see what words occurred most often in the students’ responses. In addition to these top words, WordCounter generates a word cloud as well as lists of most-used bigrams (two-word phrases) and trigrams (three-word phrases).

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The top words in student responses were not surprising to me. From transcribing, I knew that many students mentioned study rooms and the library being a good place to study, so “study” would be a top word. These frequencies were also reflected in the bigrams (“study rooms”) and trigrams (“place to study”). The students also mentioned “rooms,” “resources,” and “research” across their responses. Again, these numbers were not surprising. Many of the students thought first-year students should know about booking study rooms, finding resources, and getting research help. These numbers reinforced what I already suspected.

 

To me, the bigram/trigram frequencies were more interesting and illuminating than the top words. Having those one or two words for context was useful in determining what students thought was most important. I’ve already mentioned “study rooms” and “place to study.” Students also spoke of “[the] writing center,” “the second floor,” “hours of operation,” and “lot[s] of resources.” One set of bigrams and trigrams that surprised me was all of the n-grams using the word “great”: “a great,” “great place,” “great place to,” “a great place.” While these n-grams weren’t necessarily enlightening in terms of what responses would be well-addressed by tutorial format, it was encouraging to see the number of students who took the time to say how much they enjoyed the library.