How did Florence Nightingale help me with my assessment strategy?

In 1858, Florence Nightingale published the not-so-catchily titled 'Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army. Founded Chiefly on the Experience of the Late War. Presented by Request to the Secretary of State for War.' Nestled within this self-published piece was a hand-designed graphic; more forthrightly entitled "Diagram of the Causes of Mortality in the Army of the East.'

The graphic is a radial chart drawn on a polar coordinate grid. The chart is divided into sections, each represent a category. The value of each category is represented by how far each segment extends from the centre of the polar axis. As charts go, it's quite beautiful. This was perhaps was what lead to it being affectionately nicknamed Nightingale's "Rose Diagram." What it communicates however, is less beautiful. Nightingale was showing that epidemic disease was killing more soldiers in the Crimean war than battlefield wounds. The argument of the entire publication was that these deaths were unnecessary. They could be controlled by a variety of factors including nutrition, ventilation, and shelter. The chart was polemic.

You still see the Nightingale Rose Diagram around the traps in the data visualisation world. Albeit with less finesse. Management consultancies and investment banks love them. Sadly.

Statistically, there's a few issues with them. Actually, when it comes to quantitive data, they're not so hot. The outer segments tend to give more visual weight because of their larger area size. This is probably very useful when you're trying to make a political point about death. However, they tend to disproportionately represent increases in value. Which possibly explains why bankers and consultants love them so much.

However, the 'Wedges' as Nightingale called them do not begin and end with quantitative data. I have found that they can be a great method of visualising qualitative data too. Which is why, 161 years later, I still use something very similar to structure feedback with graphic design students.

This old chestnut

I've written before about a principle that underpins my teaching. As design educator, I tend to find conversations are more productive when we are talking about things we can see. Data visualisation, information design, visualisation is all just drawing to me and drawing can be a clarifying and revealing process. Drawing with dimensions or common rules can be revelatory.

In conversations with students, I will often use the Rose Diagram as a visual basis for the discussion. Sometimes I will define the dimensions in advance. For example, it can be a great way to map student confidence with learning outcomes and marking criteria. Students fill in the sections and we can talk about the gap between where they are and where they want to be. The 'laddered' aspect of the visual lends itself particularly well to a discussion about how that journey might break down into next steps.

Sometimes, I might ask a student to draw their own segments. This is great in the context of a personal tutorial, as it can be a way to draw out the many aspects of life that a student is juggling, what they are struggling with and how they might bring that back into balance. This style of visualization is used in co-active coaching. In that particular context it's called the 'Wheel of Life' and it is used to measure a persons level of satisfaction with different areas of their life.

Needless to say, I don't call it the 'Wheel of Life' with my students.
I think I'd probably feel a bit silly.

Turns out there's a name for this...

While I love to think I invented this. I didn't. This method has a name. It's called 'diagrammatic elicitation.' This strikes me as a fabulously academic way of complicating a relatively straightforward activity, but such is academia. The authors define diagrammatic elicitation as any approach where 'a participant physically creates and/or physically or verbally edits a diagram with the visual as the focus.' A key idea here is that the diagram is the centre of the communication. The paper further goes on to define two subcategories of diagrammatic elicitation:

(a) participant-led diagrammatic elicitation. This is where the participants create their own original diagrams

(b) researcher-led diagrammatic elicitation. This is where the researcher draws the diagram during the data collection process for discussion or participants edit a researcher-prepared diagram.

It's always handy to have names for things... and perhaps to connect with some other ways of thinking about this approach. Having this framework has given me a useful device to reflect on my previous activities and frame current ones. For instance, when I ask students to 'draw the brief,' I am eliciting a diagram. When I ask them to draw their process, I am doing the same. When I use visual tutorial and feedback techniques, I am doing the same again. The only thing that changes is whether I am leading the activity or whether the students are.

I gather this won’t be the last you’ll hear of this. I continue to experiment with diagrammatic elicitation within the curriculum and in my practice designing workshops. I suspect it might become ‘a bit of thing.’ Stay tuned.

References

Anderson, K. (2010) The Whole Learner: the role of imagination in developing disciplinary understanding. Arts and Humanites in Higher Education, 9(2): 205-21. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022210361457

Barnett, R. (2004) Learning for an Unknown Future. Higher Education Research & Development. of Journal, 23(3): 249-260. doi: 10.1080/07294360.2012.642841

Biggs, J and Tang, C (2011) Teaching for Quality Learning at University, 2nd Edition. Buckingham: Open University Press

Fraser, S & Bosanquet, A (2006) The curriculum? That’s just a unit outline isn’t it?’, Studies in Higher Education, 31(3):269-84. DOI: 10.1080/03075070600680521

Umoquit, Muriah & Tso, Peggy & Varga-Atkins, Tünde & O’Brien, Mark & Wheeldon, Johannes. (2013). Diagrammatic elicitation: Defining the use of diagrams in data collection. The Qualitative Report. 18. 1-12..