Time-lapse
Video as a Self-Reflection Tool for Collaborative Learning Projects
Louis B. Rosenberg, Ph.D.
Cotchett Professor of Educational Technology
California Polytechnic State University
(805-756-5464)
George J. Petersen,
Ph.D.
Professor and Co-Director
Cal Poly/UCSB Joint Doctoral Program
Educational Leadership and Policy
California Polytechnic State University
(805-756-7194)
Abstract: For many disciplines, students are
required to learn to work collaboratively in groups and to perform team-based activities
such as brainstorming, collaborative problem solving, and cooperative
decision-making. To support the learning
of such team-based processes, many university courses require students to engage
in short “group challenges.” These
challenges often comprise in-class experiences in which students form small
teams and attempt to solve a simulated problem of practice. Upon completion of the challenge, students
are usually asked to reflect upon their experiences and to evaluate their group
dynamics, their collective time management, and other factors that might have
contributed to the success and/or failure of the team effort. A common problem is students, like most
people, are generally poor at self-reflection and have a difficult time
objectively assessing their personal behavior as well as the behavior of their
group. To address this problem,
time-lapse video has been employed as a novel pedagogical intervention for
enhancing student reflection in group exercises. Under the protocol, groups were video taped
using time-lapse technology that visually compresses time, for example
compressing a sixty-minute work session into a sixty-second high-speed
video. We postulated that by watching
the high-speed video of their own collaborative efforts, the students would
more readily recognize patterns of behavior they otherwise would have missed:
becoming more insightful when assessing group dynamics, division of labor, time
management, and the reasons for the success or failure of their collaborative
effort. This paper describes our
preliminary efforts to develop and test such a time-lapse video intervention
for university-level group projects and describes initial observations
regarding the effect of this intervention upon student reflections.
Time-lapse Video as a Self-Reflection
Tool for Collaborative Learning Projects
Introduction: Time-lapse video is a display
methodology by which processes that occur over long periods of time are
captured on video and played back at dramatically higher speeds. Common
applications of time-lapse video include recording the growth of plants over a
period of days or weeks, capturing the motion of clouds over a period of hours,
even capturing the motion of stars across the night sky. When such processes are captured over hours,
days, or weeks and then played back over a period of seconds, behaviors that
are ordinarily too slow for humans to perceive are made perceptually
explicit. In this way, time-lapse video
is an effective perceptual tool for allowing people to perceive patterns of
activity, whether in natural phenomenon or social interactions, that ordinarily
would have escaped their senses. The
current effort explores a novel application of time-lapse video as an
educational intervention intended to enhance student ability to reflect upon
group performance in collaborative design tasks. The proposed intervention is motivated by
constructivist learning theory that supports the idea that enhanced reflection
leads to more meaningful learning outcomes.
Constructivist learning theory states
that students learn best through participation in real-world experiences and by
reflecting thoughtfully upon those experiences (Bielaczyc, Pirolli, &
Brown, 1995; Forman & Pufall, 1988; Maddux, Johnson & Willis, 1997). Empirical work in this area has demonstrated
that real-world learning has the greatest impact upon students when performed
in small groups such that students can interact socially, sharing their
insights and discussing their reflections with peers (Brooks & Brooks, 1993;
Driver, 1995; Duffy, & Cunningham, 1996; Lieb, 1991; Schifter, 1996; Schön,
1983). One technique for getting
students to reflect more critically upon their own behavior and the behavior of
their group is to have them watch video footage of themselves, thereby
encouraging them to assume more objective and self-critical perspectives. Research has demonstrated that learning is enhanced through
visual images (Schultz, 2007). Nixon
(2001) conducted research on the use of images as well as the use of images in
textbooks to assess scientific understanding. This work, along with work by
other scholars in this area (Wandersee, 1999) point to the fact that learning
is greatly improved through the use of visual experiences. Sadoski & Paivio, (2001) also found a positive
relationship in learning and imagery in their work examining the dual coding
theory of reading and writing.
Although empirical evidence points to
the fact that this type of enhanced instruction is beneficial, unfortunately
students generally lack the time and patience to watch lengthy videos of
themselves performing a multi-hour group exercise. In addition, it is often difficult for
students to watch video of their own group activity and assume a truly objective
viewing posture; by watching the video over an extended period, students may
easily get caught up in the same emotions and perspectives they held during the
experience itself.
The current research effort is thus
aimed at developing and testing of an improved video-based educational intervention
that supports group learning from a Constructivist perspective, providing
students with enhanced ability to reflect critically upon their own behavior
and the behavior of their group as a whole.
More specifically, the present intervention provides students with the
ability to view a multi-hour collaborative experience in a time-lapse video
format such that the full group experience can be viewed in just sixty seconds
or less as part of a formal reflection process.
The premise being explored is that by watching a high-speed video of
their own collaborative effort, students will be able to more objectively
reflect upon the performance of their group and more insightfully assess group
dynamics, division of labor, time management, stages of design, and the success
of their collaborative process. It has been shown
that images have played an important role in the area of science education
(Schultz, 2007). It is postulated that by observing the behavior of
their own group in this high-speed format, students will be more likely to
assume an objective stance. It is also
postulated that students will be more likely, by virtue of the unique
high-speed perspective, to observe patterns of behavior that they would not
have perceived during the actual experience or by watching a standard video of
the experience. Thus, it is anticipated that time-lapse video will help to
foster a learning environment in which more meaningful reflection can take
place, enabling students to more quickly and more objectively assess the behavior
of their group and to evaluate the reasons for collaborative successes and/or
failures.
Method
The time-lapse video intervention has
been pilot tested within two different student populations at
Post-It Design Challenge: The collaborative experience
developed for this study required students to work in teams of three to five
students and together build a structure composed entirely of Post-It® brand self-adhesive notepad
paper. Each team was challenged to
create a structure using no more than 12 standard-sized (3” x 3”) Post-Its that would support a penny as
far from the edge of their workbench as possible. The task is highly challenging because the
Post-It notes must act as both structural members and fastening components. At the inception of the group experience,
students are generally perplexed by the task, their initial design attempts
unable to support a penny more than a few inches from the edge of the
table. However over the sixty-minute
session, groups of students discover through brainstorming, prototyping, and
testing, a variety of techniques for stiffening their structures and increasing
the supported distance. For example, by
folding, rolling, bending, or otherwise altering the cross-section of the
Post-It members, students discover that significantly improved structures can
be constructed. Ultimately most groups
produce designs that are able to support a penny more than 20” from the edge of
their workbench and some groups exceed 30” in support distance.
At the completion of the design
experience, each group of students is asked to collaboratively reflect upon the
successes and/or failures of their group effort. More specifically, the groups are asked to
respond to a set of questions designed to assess how their team performed as a
whole and how each of them contributed personally to the effort. They are also asked to consider the number
and variety of ideas explored, the design principles discovered, and how well
the team managed its time. In addition,
students are asked to consider as a group what they would do differently the
next time they engage in a collaborative problem-solving task. Rules of the “Post-It Design Challenge”:
As described above, students were required to work in teams and to build
Post-It structures that could suspend a penny as far off the edge of their
workbench as possible, each structure using no more than twelve standard-size
Post-It sheets. Students were encouraged
to work quickly and to test as many ideas as they could during the allotted
time. Students were instructed they were
allowed to tear, fold, rip, or otherwise alter the Post-It notes in any way
they saw fit, but could not use any other materials and could not use more than
twelve Post-It notes in any single structure.
The challenge was run as a competition among groups, a small prize being
awarded to the winning team. In this way
students were motivated to work hard during the sixty minute period and to seek
an optimal solution.
The sixty-minute design session was
conducted as follows – whenever a group had a design completed and loaded with
a penny, they were instructed to call over a faculty member for an official
measurement. The distance was measured
as the perpendicular distance from the nearest edge of the table to an
imaginary vertical line passing through the penny. Students were allowed to request official
measurements as many times as they desired during the session. Thus, each time a new design was constructed
by a group they could immediately request a new measurement. This encouraged students to explore a variety
of ideas during the session, driving them to generate multiple designs of
increasing distance. In addition, the
current “maximum distance” among all groups in the class was announced by the
instructor each time a new record distance was achieved. The leading distance was also posted by the
instructor upon the board in the front of the room. In this way students were motivated through
friendly competition to push themselves to exceed the distance achieved by the
current leading design.
Task
Completion and Reflection: At the
end of the sixty-minute design challenge, the winning team was honored with a
small award. Each team was then required
to engage in an in-group reflection session, discussing together how they
performed during the challenge. To
structure the reflection process, the teams were given a set of written
questions to discuss as a group (see questions below). They were then required to draft a formal
written response to each question and turn it in before they departed. The discussion and written reflection process
was performed immediately after the design challenge to ensure the experience
was fresh in the students’ minds.
Students were provided as much time as they needed to perform the
reflection portion of the collaborative experience. The written instructions provided to each
group were as follows:
“Having just completed the Post-it Design
Challenge, each group is to write about the experience and turn it in before
you leave. Your objective is to think
critically about the collaborative effort, reflecting upon the performance of
your group by answering each questions [sic] listed below. Please make sure you read each question
carefully and address all of the sub-parts.
Remember, your goal is to make insightful observations about your team’s
behavior, both strengths and weaknesses.”
1. How well did your group work
together in a team?
What would you do differently next time you work together on a design
team?
2. How well did your group manage its
time?
How would you use your time differently next time you tackle a
collaborative design task?
3. Did everyone participate equally?
How would you divide the labor differently next time you work on a
collaborative design task?
4. How many ideas did your team
conceive and test?
Did you do enough brainstorming?
Enough prototyping? Enough
testing? Enough thinking?
5. What advice would you give to a group of engineers who are about to engage in a collaborative
design project?
Time-Lapse Intervention
During the initial pilot study, the Post-It Design Challenge was run with
six teams of students in each of the two academic classes, each team consisting
of three to five participants. Of the
six groups in each class, three were asked to perform the written reflection
after experiencing the time-lapse video intervention and three were asked to
perform the written reflection without the time-lapse intervention. For those groups that were given the intervention,
the time-lapse video of their sixty-minute collaborative effort was shown
immediately prior to their reflection process (video – http://www.education.uiowa.edu/jrel/media/).
Each video was approximately sixty seconds long and was displayed on a
laptop computer at their design table.
The groups were required to view the video only once, but were
instructed they may view the video additional times at their own
discretion.
Findings
Provided this was a small
pilot-study, only a modest amount of data was collected. This caveat aside, this investigation did
yield interesting results, useful anecdotal observations, and generated very
positive feedback from students. A first
important observation was that all six
groups presented with the time-lapse video intervention verbally reported
that the high-speed video was interesting to watch and worth the time required
to do so. In fact, all six groups chose to watch the time-lapse video multiple times
even though they were only required to watch it once. In addition, all groups were observed to
engage in energetic group conversations while watching the time-lapse video,
commenting amongst themselves about various aspects of their group behavior.
Differences in Reflection
There were marked differences between
the groups that were exposed to the time-lapse video intervention versus those
groups that were not. With respect to the written reflection documents produced
by the students, the six groups provided with the time-lapse video intervention
generated reflection documents of greater length than the six groups that did
not experience the intervention. The
average word count among the video-watching groups was 325 words (SD = 39
words) while the average word count among the non video-watching groups was 214
words (SD = 47 words). This represents a
52% increase in document length for the video-watching groups. Thus the length of the written reflection
documents, while not conclusive in itself, suggests a more thoughtful
reflection effort was performed by each of the video-watching groups as
compared to the control groups.
Another observed difference between
the video-watching and non-video watching groups was the nature of their written
reflections. In general, the written
reflections provided by the video-watching groups were observed to be more
self-critical than the reflections provided by the control groups. For example, the six groups that watched the
time-lapse video each submitted highly critical assessments of their time
management skills. This is reflected in
the following quotes taken from each of the of the video-watching group’s
written documents:
Conversely, the six groups that did
not experience the video intervention provided no critical assessments of the
time management skills – none. In fact,
two of the groups made no qualifying assessment of the time management aspects
of their performance despite being explicitly asked to do so in the questions
provided. The remaining groups made the
following comments:
Finally, it should be noted that in
one of the classes, the group that won the competition was among the groups
that viewed the time-lapse video intervention.
Still despite having won the competition by a substantial margin over
the over groups, this group still provided a critical assessment of their
time-management skills in the document they turned in.
Conclusion
This initial pilot study seems to
suggest time-lapse video may be a valuable tool for inspiring thoughtful and
critical reflection among collaborative teams of students (Solso, 1994). All six student groups that were exposed to
the intervention responded favorably to the time-lapse video presentation, not
a single student expressing that the added requirement of watching the video
was a burden or a waste of time. Much
the opposite, all of these groups chose to watch the video multiple times
despite the fact they were only required to do so once. In addition, group members that watched the
time-lapse video provided lengthier and more critical written reflections of
their collaborative efforts than the groups that were not presented with the
video intervention. Although the current
pilot study is preliminary in nature, the initial observations as reported
herein indicate that further investigations into the use of time-lapse video as
a self-reflection tool for collaborative design projects should be performed.
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