Video and Voicethread

Challenges of Capturing, Managing, Transcribing,

Analyzing, and Presenting Multisemiotic Data

Mary M. Juzwik, Samantha Caughlan, Carlin

Borsheim, Anne Heintz, Mike Sherry
Michigan State University
 The Problem:
Dialogic Instruction is rare 
in secondary English classrooms
• What do we mean by "dialogic instruction"?  
o A cluster of practices linked to:
 student achievement growth
 heightened student engagement (Applebee et al., 2003)
 
 

• What are examples of dialogic instruction?

o Open discussions in which students raise new ideas
o Q/A sessions which include authentic teacher or student
questions
o Some forms of small group work (Nystrand et al., 1997)
 The Problem:
Recitation and IRE hold sway 
in secondary English classrooms
• If Dialogic Instruction is rare, then what is more common?
o Recitation
 an historically default mode of English
                classroom talk (Mehan, 1977; Nystrand et al., 1997; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975) 
o I-R-E sequence
 teacher initiates (I) questions, student responds (R), 
teacher evaluates (E) student answer
The Problem: Dialogic Instruction is
rare in secondary English classrooms
• What do we mean by "dialogic instruction"?  
o A cluster of practices that researchers link to student
achievement growth and to heightened student
engagement (e.g., Applebee et al., 2003)
o Examples: open discussions in which students probe and
question ideas, Q/A sessions that include authentic
questions (posed by teacher or student), some forms of
small group work (Nystrand et al., 1997)
• If Dialogic Instruction is rare, then what is more common?
o Recitation: historically default mode of English classroom
talk (Mehan, 1977; Nystrand et al, 1997)
o Example: the I-R-E sequence in which teachers initiate (I)
questions, student respond (R), and teachers evaluate
(E) their answers
An Effort to Address this Problem in
English Teacher Education: VBRR 
• Video-Based Response and Revision (VBRR): a two-year
study of our programmatic effort to support teacher
candidates in moving toward dialogically organized
instruction 
• Guiding Questions of VBRR:
o Given participation in VBRR, what – if any – dialogic instructional practices
do TCs develop?
o How - if at all - do these practices develop over time?
o To what extent do teacher candidates who practice collaboratively
analyzing common video texts become flexible, imaginative, and confident
users of video-based and Web 2.0  technologies? 
o How can we characterize the professional conversations among teacher
candidates engaging in VBRR?  
Capturing
Data Sources
& Managing
VBRR 
- Data Generation
Student VBRR 
Research  interns (90) Research 
Team (6) Team (5)
                Voicethread file    
                        VT file    
*5-minute clip of  • Buys equipment • Videorecord  • Downloads VT
 dialogic teaching (video); • Trains interns  • Edits Quicktime file to
*lesson plan (text); • Crafts • Transcribes hard drive
*transcript (text),  assignment • Uploads • Transcribes/copies
*questions posed (a,v or t) • Comments   VT files to Word to
*comments made (a,v or t) hard drive
*reflection (a,v or t)
n=360

Intern documentaries • Trains interns  • Synthesizes and • Saves/downloads

(video) • Crafts composes to hard drive
n=90 assignment

Individual and focus • Pilots questions • Transcribes

group interviews • Interviews interviews to Word
(audio) to hard drive
n=20

Videotaped class • Records with • Transfers video

sessions classroom files to hard drive
(video) equipment   
n=60
Transcribing

• What are we doing now 

o TR- dialogic practices over time
o R & R - collaboration through voicethread
 
 
While we are pursing lines of inquiry, we are also...
• reflecting on the relationship between the research
questions, the type of text, transcription, and analysis
• asking what is gained and lost by the different choices
we make about transcription?
Data are pushing us to contemplate... 
    
• What other methods of transcription might help us
address rich dimensions of multisemiotic data? (Latour,
Goodwin, Prior, Leander)
• Other ideas 
o Other software (e.g., ATLAS.ti, Zotero)
o Maps or graphics
o Moves to track asynchronous communication,
communication across time and space
Analysis

Returning to the research questions:

• Given participation in VBRR, what – if any – dialogic instructional practices do

TCs develop?
• How - if at all - do these practices develop over time?
 
Given a large corpus , what can be gained from the whole?
Where do we want to dig in for more fine-grained analysis?
How do we select for that purpose? 
What methods do we have that give us purchase and a starting
place? 
The Practices Over Time analysis

A pass through the entire corpus of documents associated with

Voicethread files, relying largely on known analytic methods.  

Q: What dialogic practices do TC's develop?  Where do we find

evidence of these?   
    In planning
    In questioning 
    In patterns of interaction 
 
Q: How can we combine analysis with identification and
location for future analyses? 
    Creating a database and code book
Planning Questioning Interactional
    patterns
Instructional focus, grade, Teacher questions:  Number of students
content authentic questions participating (tally)
  (or not)
Sequence of activities in   Turntaking patterns
lesson plan uptake
  Management: Turntaking
Section of lesson Student questions and Behavioral
transcribed  
  Notes Revoicing
What (if any) tools to promote  
dialogic interaction evident? Notes (e.g., discussion,
narrative)
Providing a partial view:

• Relying on categories from previous research provides a

means of comparison.
• What else we're seeing:
o Apparently dialogic interactions where little of substance
is happening
o Interactions featuring surprises in the opposite direction:
e.g., teacher questions mainly non-authentic, but student
responses lengthy and thoughtful
o Teacher and student moves that do not fit easily into
established categories
• Notes columns and research meetings are becoming active
sites for pushing our thinking to the next step.
Future analyses: Moving into micro-
analyses
• Preparation for discussion and resulting practices
• Identifying subsets of teachers for study by group, by grade level, by
curricular focus, by use of dialogic tools, etc.
• moving from a focus on categorizing classroom practices to
considering how they function in use.
• Multisemiotic analyses of video to move beyond text and voice to
consider multiple styles of facilitating and managing interaction. 
Future analyses

Our remaining research questions: sites for developing

methodologies
 
• How can we characterize the professional conversations among teacher
candidates engaging in VBRR?  
o Response and reflection analysis: what goes on in the groups? How do
they make use of the Web 2.0 environment?  How can we make
connections between and among online group interaction and
development of classroom practices?
o Data sources: Response transcripts, reflections, video clips,
documentaries.
• To what extent do teacher candidates who practice collaboratively analyzing
common video texts become flexible, imaginative, and confident users of
video-based and Web 2.0  technologies? In this project?  In their planning for
instruction more generally?
o Data sources: interviews, plans, documentaries
Presentation

Multimodal publication and presentation

• Considerations
o Ethical
o Empirical
o Aesthetic

• Forthcoming article in CITE (Contemporary issues in

technology and teacher education)
o Text is presented with video files, screencasts, and links 
to data files
Questions
1. Generationand Implications
Teachers record and select video clips for Why, how, and by
pedagogical purposes whom have selections
been made?
 
 
Large-scale multisemiotic dataset What is gained 
2.Transcription includes teaching practice and lost by (re)
recontextualized on video with associated (con)textualization 
  print materials in a VoiceThread to which over time?
others have added commentary over time

Data bundled in a VoiceThread can be What relationships 

3. Analysis separated for analysis (e.g., transcript, are possible/
teacher commentary) necessary?

 
Video shows faces and spaces, and What are ethical,
4. Presentation allows intercutting of clips empirical, aesthetic
considerations?
 
 
Curriculum Innovation 

In the second year, interns used Voicethread to post a 5-minute

clip of their teaching and to ask questions of their small peer
groups regarding their attempts at promoting dialogic
interactions 
Peers watched each others' video clips, read accompanying
lesson plans and transcripts, and posted responsive
comments. 
After receiving feedback, interns wrote reflections addressing
what they had taken away from the process and describing
revisions they intended to make as a result. 
 Sequence of Video Assignments
Video Post 1: October 
• getting to know the process

Video Post 2: November 

• digging in to dialogic instruction

Video Post 3: February 

• goal setting; taking on others' perspectives

Video Post 4: March 

• looking backwards and forwards

Digital Reflection: April 

• A capstone piece which uses data such as clips and
commentary to narrate a journey
Curriculum Innovation

Example of Voicethread Post 3

Example of Digital Reflective Essay
Examples of analysis

Macro-analysis: how to deal with patterns over a large data

corpus?

How to use this to choose significant samples for a closer look?

Micro-analysis: pushing the boundaries of research on
classroom discourse.
Where do multi-modal data allow us to push things further?
Macro Analysis

Discourse patterns over time chart

Macro Analysis
Discourse patterns over time chart:

• What sorts of lessons are used to practice dialogic

instruction?
• How do teachers plan for dialogic instruction?
• Where in the lesson does the clip belong?
• What kinds of questions do we find? 
• How many students participate in the short clip?
• What patterns of student-teacher participation are evident?
• How do these change over time, both for individuals and
within groups?
• What is notable during this first pass? 
• What does Excel allow us to do to locate patterns and code
lessons?
Possible topics for micro-analysis:

• Preparation for discussion

• Study teacher and student moves:
o Working towards the dialogic: teacher invitations, student
commitment to a proposition, teacher stepping back
(Caughlan, 2004)
o Upping the ante to push thinking to a higher level (Adler &
Rougle, 2005)
o Study the tension between teacher control and letting go. 
o  Critical turning points (Skidmore,2000): when teachers
use, and when they disregard, opportunities for student
discovery.
• Substantive content of dialogic interactions over time.
Issues to be considered

o capturing multisemiotic data

o management multisemiotic data
o transcribing multisemiotic data
o analyzing multisemiotic data
o presenting multisemiotic data
These tension in our data are pushing
our thinking about:

o objects of study
o methodology
o theory
o pedagogy
Some tensions have emerged

• individual vs. social (collaboration, reflection, dialogism)

• distant vs. immediate (face-to-face vs remote
collaboration)
• synchronous vs asynchronous (space, time,
collaboration)
• unimodal vs. multimodal (composition, reflection, video
vs. face-to-face)
• univocal vs. multisemiotic (how teachers negotiate and
potentially integrate conflicting sign systems)
Implications

Theoretical (for researchers): Multisemiotic vs. Multimodal

analysis 
Practical (for teacher educators): Multisemiotic analysis as tool
for labeling and supporting classroom management moves

Practical (for teacher candidates): Creating and evaluating

multisemiotic practices