It's been grindingly slow, but I have finally written a program to analyse the log files we gathered in our recent school study. I actually really like doing this kind of thing. I have been tormenting the rest of the AA team with my graphs for weeks. My poor husband has been roped in to help my with some of the database code (thank you, dear!)
We had a class of 25 pupils work with our Adventure Author game making software for around 6 weeks. As they used the software, it logged what they were doing, for example adding an idea to the Fridge Magnets, writing conversation, or playing their game. The result of this was a huge number of time stamped log files, totalling around 234,000 actions.
Why on earth did we bother? Well, in Adventure Author we are interested in the creative process of game design. We want to know what sequences of actions when using the software seem to produce good games in the end. Cathrin has been busy analysing the games themselves to get an estimation of their quality, and I have been automatically processing these log files to try to build up a picture of the sequence of activities the children typically do. Eventually we will match them up.