"Sense-Making" Response

This is an approach to active digestion of what you are reading that involves making notes under each of the following headings:
a) I appreciated...
b) I learned...
c) I wanted to know more about...
d) I struggled with...
e) I would have been helped by...
f) My project connects with this in the following way(s)...
g) I disagreed with...
h) I think the author or presenter should consider...

(see Phase B)

Footnote on sense-making

Brenda Dervin has developed a "Sense-Making" approach to the development of information seeking and use. One finding from Sense-Making research is that people make much better sense of seminar presentations and other scholarly contributions when these are accompanied by the contextual information in the items below.

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Author(s)
Title of paper
a) The essence of the project is...
b) The reason(s) I took this road is (are)...
c) The best of what I have achieved is...
d) What has been particularly helpful to me in this project has been...
e) What has hindered me has been...
f) What I am struggling with is...
g) What would help me now is...

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This Sense-Making approach also leads to recommendations about forms of response that authors and presenters learn most from—and readers and listeners also. The response format suggested for active reading derives from those recommendations.

Reference

Dervin, B. (1999) "Chaos, order, and sense-making: A proposed theory for information design," pp. 35-57 in Robert Jacobson (ed.) Information Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/art/artabsdervin99mit.html (viewed 11 Jul 2011)