Really great to see the students working with each other, in real time, in tandem with a view of their workspace activities! Wow. This is novel work. Can you provide more details about how you are evaluating the way this new format impacts learning?

This is a wonderful idea. What you are doing with your video project is similar, in my mind, to what happens in the learning environment that I created called the Problem-solving studio (check out my video if you get a chance!). The students work in teams to solve problems. The idea of doing this on video is fantastic!

Nice job, Joanne and team! I’m also interested in hearing about what you find in terms of students learning from watching the videos.

While I watched your interesting video I kept thinking of Derek Muller’s dissertation. I was pleased at the end to see that he’s on your advisory board. He was also very helpful in our Interactive Video Vignettes project. In fact, he appears at the end of our video.
We had good experience interviewing passers-by at a fair, but when we put college students in front of a video camera they often clam up or try to figure out what we want them to say. Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER) tells us what students usually predict for various situations, but students on camera don’t seem to spontaneously come up with the same range of things. We often have to script them according to DBER results. Do you have any techniques for getting your students to cover what you want them to cover?

Dialogue, making meaning, struggle – it’s beautiful. I believe these videos will be helpful to students and teachers. Watching and listening to students can really provide insight into students’ conceptual understandings and misunderstandings. Too often we forget to listen. Will you include videos where students have misunderstandings but through their dialogue and struggle correct their misunderstandings? Videos demonstrating students learning mathematical concepts by “taking apart their misunderstandings” will help teachers and students focus on learning instead of simply completing a task! Are you looking for high school classes to work with?

Lisa, Thanks for your comments. I love your question. The short answer is “yes”! There are several nice instances in the first parabola lesson in which the students have a misunderstanding or partial understanding and are able to work through it together. First, they thought that the focus should be on the directrix, but figured out that this would produce a line rather than a parabola. Second, the two students were measuring the distance from a point to a line differently (e.g., one student formed a perpendicular segment between the point and the directrix and measured that distance while the other student looked at a much longer distance from the point to the directrix). Using string and a scissors they were able to sort this issue out through dialogue.

Great idea! I realize from the discussion that you are early in the project, but have you thought about whether this type of video might have to be longer than the typical procedural ones and, if so, how to keep the learners’ attention? For a general public audience, by the way, words like “meaning making” and “conceptual learning trajectory” might need some explanation.

Each lesson is broken into chunks that are only 2-10 minutes in length. The chunks are of different types:

1. Comprehension: The task that drives the lesson is posed and students make sense of the situation.
2. Exploration: Students work on the task (often by creating something or exploring an applet).
3. Explanation: The students explain their reasoning or share discoveries from the Exploration phase.
4. Repeated Reasoning: Vicarious learners are directed to stop video, work on task and then compare to what the kids in the video did.