A fairly simple representation of my learning network. To elaborate on some things: since the whiteboard I chose to work on was not very big, I grouped all my lectures, labs, assignments, textbooks & readings, etc together. I think the thing that maybe doesn’t show through on this map is the degree to which Youtube acts as an educational resource for me. Not only is Youtube my go-to for tutorials for how to solve specific questions in math or computer science that I cannot figure out, but I watch videos about cool applications of math when I’m cooking, or interesting algorithms in coding when I’m doing my laundry, or film analysis when I exercise, or political video essays when I’m unwinding and getting ready for bed. As a rule of thumb, if I have any downtime in a day, I spend it on Youtube learning new things about the subjects that I’m passionate about, and discovering new subjects for me to learn about later. I can then watch more videos about on Youtube to expand my understanding of these new subjects, or I can take to my Professor’s office hours to learn about, or read the Wikipedia article(s) to find other related fields that may interest me, as well as more formal in-depth resources, like scientific papers. 

Another observation of the map is that all roads seem to lead to the “practice” node at some point. This makes sense; I’m studying computer science and math, and the only way to get better at those things once you’ve grasped the concepts is to just practice applying them until you’ve got the hang of it. Something that surprised me is how little I talk to my peers about my classes; once I really thought about it I realized I talk with a peer about once a week per class. This is because I have some pre-existing friends in all the in-person classes I’m taking, so more often than not when I talk to them we tend to drift from discussing academics towards a more casual, “just-hanging-out” type of conversation, which I chose not to really count. When we do feel the need or the want to discuss the class seriously, we do that, but it’s not very often. My connections are relatively in ratio to how high the class is on my priority list, although its hard to see that in this format. I spend the most time in office hours with my CS prof, and very little with my health class prof, mostly just an email from time to time. Similarly, while I draw on the same resources (Youtube, the recommended textbook, lecture, office hours, etc) for most classes, I simply spend more time on certain classes, and thus the strength of the connection is stronger.

I chose to give this learning activity a shot because I wanted to explore how I have set up my learning network; since most of the nodes I have listed I am either a (mostly) inactive participant, like watching a video on Youtube or a lecture, or I am working (mostly) on my own, like in a lab, or doing an assignment, or practicing, I had an initial impression that my network was rather small. However, while I think that while the number of different overall nodes might be small, the value of the learning that I can glean from a well crafted lecture, or video, or textbook is quite high. This also attests to how valuable open learning is. I have Youtube as my primary learning resource for a reason, and that is because all the educational content that I view on Youtube is designed in a way that it is meant to be accessible and open, and focuses on the learning for the sake of the learning, with these new concepts or expanded knowledge bases meant to fit right in to the understanding of any given viewer. I don’t think I learned as much as I could have about my learning network, mostly on account of the limited size of my medium disallowing for an exceptionally expansive or detailed map, but I did gain some insight, as discussed above. If I were to do it again, I think I would try to zero in on the nitty gritty details, since I already have the “big picture” map here.