Assignment 2: Touch Grass Field Study

A field study outside your usual 400-metre radius, run under three restrictions and written up in a 1000-word report

The brief#

Leave your usual 400-metre radius and do one thing that isn’t computer science, with people who also aren’t computer science.

Pick one activity from the seven on offer, run it for real, and write it up in a 1000-word report.

The seven activities#

Choose one: a park, a café, team sports, a museum, a social event, shopping, or a club.

The three restrictions#

1. No laptop, no coding. The activity is not computer science wearing a costume.
2. CS discussion capped at five minutes. If the conversation drifts toward anything you would bring up in a lecture, redirect it — and if it runs past five minutes in total, say so in the report.
3. At least two non-CS people. Name them (first names are enough) and how you know them.

Compliance is self-reported#

Nobody is following you around with a stopwatch. Compliance with all three restrictions is self-reported, and the report is the evidence: write it as if it will be checked against a recording, because for marking purposes it is the recording.

What you submit#

A 1000-word report naming the activity, when it ran, and who else was there, addressing each of the three restrictions directly. Under Reflection, the report also:

• states whether you brought your phone, whether you checked it, and connects this to Week 6’s finding on the mere-presence effect (Ward et al., 2017);
• states whether this activity met your Week 4 exercise plan’s stated frequency and named activity for the week — and if it didn’t, what you’d adjust;
• for at least one of the two non-CS people, names one thing you learned using the small-talk formula from Week 7 (their name, a hobby, a recent trip).

The report is submitted on paper. See Policies for where to hand it in and the extenuating-circumstances exception.

How each band reads#

The bands describe the state of the submitted report, not the person who wrote it:

• HD — the report names specific, checkable observations about the activity and the people there, reflects on what those observations actually mean rather than just recounting them, and addresses all three restrictions with specific evidence.
• D — the report is specific about the activity and reflects on it, but one restriction is addressed only in general terms.
• C — the report covers the activity and all three restrictions, but the reflection mostly summarises what happened rather than examining it.
• P — the report is vague about what actually happened, or one restriction goes unaddressed.
• N — the report doesn’t name a real activity, or two or more restrictions go unaddressed.

FAQ#

Does a study group of CS students count as one of the seven activities?#

No. The activity has to be one of the seven listed, and the non-CS requirement applies to the people there, not just the topic. A group of CS students doing a non-CS activity together still fails the two non-CS-people restriction.

My phone buzzed but I didn’t check it — does that still count against me?#

No, and it’s actually the more interesting answer to write up: state that you didn’t check it, and connect that specifically to Week 6’s mere-presence finding, since the effect is about the phone sitting there, not about looking at it.