Analytics of the effects of video use and instruction to support reflective learning

Although video annotation software is no longer considered as a new innovation, its application in promoting student self-regulated learning and reflection skills has only begun to emerge in the research literature. Advances in text and video analytics provide the capability of investigating students' use of the tool and the psychometrics and linguistic processes evident in their written annotations. This paper reports on a study exploring students' use of a video annotation tool when two different instructional approaches were deployed - graded and non-graded self-reflection annotations within two courses in the performing arts. In addition to counts and temporal locations of self-reflections, the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Counts (LIWC) framework was used for the extraction of variables indicative of the linguistic and psychological processes associated with self-reflection annotations of videos. The results indicate that students in the course with graded self reflections adopted more linguistic and psychological related processes in comparison to the course with non-graded self reflections. In general, the effect size of the graded reflections was lower for students who took both courses in parallel. Consistent with prior research, the study identified that students tend to make the majority of their self-reflection annotations early in the video time line. The paper also provides several suggestions for future research to better understand the application of video annotations in facilitating student learning.