Unfortunately, our consent forms were not written to allow us to contribute the raw videos to a video data bank for secondary analysis. We are using short clips in conference presentations, and ideally will publish some results in online journals that would allow readers to link to the clip we refer to in the article.

I will say that working with video (100s of hours worth) has taken more time than we thought. We are not doing full transcriptions (audio is difficult to discern sometimes in any event), but rather are relying on “elaborated running records” for qualitative analysis, and the sequence analysis approach to quantize the qualitative video data.

The color coding we showed for our “sequence analysis” of group process is based on our coding of the group’s level of behavioral, cognitive and social engagement. The sequence analysis is being led by one of our doctoral students, Miancheng Guo, who is particularly looking at sequence patterns for gender sub-groups for his dissertation. Thanks for your interest, Richard!

I think the field of STEM media producers might be very interested in a paper on the methodology alone, separate from your findings. Good opportunity for Miancheng Guo to get a publication!

Yes Richard, I will cherish this opportunity. Also, thanks for mentioning that the field of STEM media producers could be a direction to go!

We put students into groups based on their level of interest in biology and the biology class (low vs. high interest). Students’ interest was assessed with a short questionnaire at the beginning of the school year; total scores determined low or high interest level.
We analyze group behavior in three dimensions (social/relational, affect, and cognitive), which allows us to understand what is happening in groups, who does what, who is “freeloading and dominating” and how this results in group dynamic.

Thank you for you comment and we are happy that you are interested in reading more about our results and share it with your colleagues. We have a short paper published and more is in the pipeline.
The question of the task condition or type of task is something we are investigating (inquiry-based science vs. engineering design). We also look particularly within engineering design, how different steps of engineering design are related to group dynamics along all three dimensions. One of our doctoral students in our team is focusing his dissertation on this aspect.

Yes Brian, in my preliminary study I did find patterns similar to what you described (I am the doctoral student that Martina mentioned), and I found that such variations were not only related to the specific engineering design steps, but also to the gender composition of the student group.
For example, in the case that I studied (four groups with different boy-girl ratios), in the conceptual design (brainstorming) step both girls’ and boys’ behavioral, emotional and cognitive engagement levels were high, but when the groups entered into embodiment design (construction of prototype), in gender-parity and female-minority groups boys got even more active with some typical male-pattern behaviors while in contrast girls’ emotional and cognitive engagement levels obviously faded.

Yes, this project is very much confirming that idea for me as well, even if kids have been working in small groups since elementary school. The support needed for good group functioning needs to be tailored to developmental level, I think, and probably to subject too. So… how a teacher supports 3rd graders would be different than 9th graders, and how one supports group work in math or English differs from science (and engineering design).

About the ‘artificiality’ — I think kids too sort of know these days how to make their group seem “reasonable.” And they know that the work is supposed to be shared, and that they’re supposed to brainstorm. It’s been interesting to compare what group members say about their group functioning in focus group interviews versus what we as researchers saw in the videos.

We’re working on inter-rater reliability for the sequence analysis, but the basic coding at the moment is level of engagement (100% of group, 75%, etc) — and we look at behavioral engagement, social and cognitive engagement. The social engagement piece would definitely involve interaction between students — could be talk, but also looking at each other, etc.

I completely agree that when the groups really get going — really talking to each other, exploring materials, etc, not just checking in with each other about how to fill out a worksheet — the room is noisy. We need to coach administrators about what academically productive science classrooms are like!