A Postcard from Amsterdam

When I studied abroad, I combined journal entries with found objects (ticket stubs, stickers, sketches, etc.) to make a scrapbook that could summarize for others what my experience was like. It became a neat artifact, though it overlooked other factors, like emotions, that also contributed to my sense of place.

Recounting a semester abroad to friends and family back home isn’t as straightforward as it might seem. While I – and many students – have had transformative experiences in a new culture, it can be challenging to share what was accomplished and learned.

What might my scrapbook have looked like had I communicated these intangible details and not just the ones captured in photographs?

I imagined this when I co-led DIS - Study Abroad’s new Data Analytics course to Amsterdam last month for a week of academic visits and cultural activities. Each day, I kept track of how I felt and recorded the small, delightful moments that gave the city life. Then, I visualized these data by hand. The result is a Dear Data-style postcard resembling the very neighborhoods that I explored!

As I chat about this project with my colleagues, I realize that analog data collection and visualization can be a powerful metacognitive activity that helps students contextualize and communicate their studies abroad. I think that there is also the potential for these activities to play a role in the classroom, both as a means to encourage student participation and as an opportunity for students to learn more about the city in which they live.

Lastly, a big thank you to Raul for coordinating our meeting at the University of Applied Sciences and to Qichun for introducing us to the visualization work at Miele X during the course’s visit to Amsterdam! Our students appreciated learning about how experts in different fields do their work, and the presentations inspired me to reflect on how we might creatively use data in a study abroad context too.