Real-Time Audio Reflection of Video Analysis for Action Research

A right of passage for many teachers is a foundational video case analysis of their teaching, recorded and previewed by external faculty and staff members.  This practice is in place for pre-service teachers, teachers under review at new schools, and even associate instructors at the university level. While often viewed as a slightly intimidating process, the video review process is integral in establishing action research ideals for teachers.

The reflection process is crucial to not only the teacher’s development but also for enhancing their instructional approaches.  Many teacher preparatory programs strive to teach future teachers reflective practices that directly inform their action (Hatton & Smith, 1995).  Teachers need to think critically about, and learn from their past experiences through meaningful reflective practices.

While reflections can take place through listening, speaking, drawing, and any other way imaginable, the most meaningful reflections often take place after watching yourself perform tasks.  The idea is for teachers to video record themselves and capture objective descriptions of what happened, discuss feelings, ideas and analysis, and discuss how they reacted as a result of the experience.  The figure below represents the reflection process (adopted from Quinsland & Van Ginkel, 1984).

According to Quinsland and Van Ginkel (1984), processing is a practice that encourages one to reflect, describe, analyze, and communicate their experiences. The processing and reflection will not only allow for an enhanced learning experience but will also contribute to the teaching and learning of future students.  Past literature has shown that critical reflection will increase learning, understanding, and retention (Daudelin, 1996).  Additionally it invokes a process of taking meanings and moving them into learning (Mezirow, 1990).

The process of reflection is critical to action research (Kemmis, 1985), and action research need to be systematic (Gore & Zwichner, 1991; Price, 2001) that creates questions and answers them in the teaching context.  Historically, many teachers use a variety of tools such as observation logs and reflective journals (Darling-Hammond, 2012).

This activity will walk you though that process:

The first step is to insert the video observation into ELAN.  Give the video an initial viewing and add in annotations.  Annotations should be reflections of your teaching and immediate methods, they can also be ideas that you wish to further explore and revisit.

The second step is to create an audio-based discussion. As the video is playing, create an audio recording of your immediate reflections.  During the second video run-through, stop the recording periodically to voice record your thoughts.

Place the audio recording into the ELAN platform, synchronizing the wave with the video observation.  Once you silence your observational video you will be able to listen to your thought process overlayed to your observational data.  Another way of looking at this overlay: The reflected audio file replaces the audio component of the video observation.  This will allow you to pair your analysis to the observation, reflecting the moments of instruction.

Once audio and video, with annotations, are embedded and synced, add a second layer of annotations based on the alignment between your audio reflections.  This can be areas for improvement, implications for future practices, and moments that surprise you.  By integrating aspects of verbal, visual, and kinesthetic cues, teachers can establish retrieval systems that will allow them to change practices on the fly.

These approaches will allow teachers to self-reflect and create keys that indicate needs for change.  This systemic approach to identifying problems and providing solution, take a critical approach to teacher-based action research.  The benefit of using video and audio based reflections is the fluid and organic nature of reflection that allow teachers to improve their instructional techniques effectively (Altrichter, Feldman, Posch, & Somekh, 2013).

References

Altrichter, H., Feldman, A., Posch, P., & Somekh, B. (2013).Teachers investigate their work: An introduction to action research across the professions. New York, NY: Routledge.

Darling-Hammond, L. (2012).Powerful teacher education: Lessons from exemplary programs. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.

Daudelin, M. (1996). Learning from Experience Through Reflection. Organizational Dynamics, 24(3), 36-48.

Gore, J. M., & Zeichner, K. M. (1991). Action research and reflective teaching in preservice teacher education: A case study from the United States.Teaching and teacher education,7(2), 119-136.

Hatton, N., & Smith, D. (1995). Reflection in teacher education: Towards definition and implementation.Teaching and teacher education,11(1), 33-49.

Kemmis, S. (1985). Action research and the politics of reflection. In D. Boud, R. Keogh & D. Walker (Eds.),Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning(pp. 139-164). New York, NY: Routledge.

Mezirow, J. (1990). How critical reflection triggers transformative learning. Fostering critical reflection in adulthood, 1-20.

Price, J. N. (2001). Action research, pedagogy and change: The transformative potential of action research in pre-service teacher education. Journal of Curriculum Studies,33(1), 43-74.

Quinsland, L. K. & Van Ginkel, A. (1984). How to Process Experience. The Journal of Experiential Education, 7 (2), 8-13.

 

“947 days ago”

Two years, seven months and two days ago, PhD Comics produced a comic about smartphone auto corrections (see below) that included common words used by doctoral students.

The reading on audio and visual transcription reminded me of this comic as the discussion moved from techniques (Paulus, Lester, & Dempster, 2013) towards accuracy (Johnson, 2011).  In Johnson’s (2011) paper, comparing listen-&-type method to voice recognition software transcriptions, he comments on issues of time and accuracy.  These two criteria seem to be the sticking points when dealing with transcription in research studies.  It was interesting to see the side-by-side comparison of the two techniques.  But, I must say…all said and done…that I felt slightly irked by the final result.  In Table 1, shown below, the results of the transcribing process are displayed.  In the grand scheme of things ten minutes don’t make a huge difference.  I mean, after all, we spend countless hours researching, implementing and interpreting information.

During a recent research study, my research team toyed with the idea of outsourcing our transcriptions. There are sites that charge minimally for transcribing your audio, even video, files (e.g. Outsource 2 India – which changes about $40 for an hour of audio transcription, or Scribe 4 You – which charges a penny a word).  While both of these sites are highly ranked and reviewed, the researchers should still due their due diligence and review the transcript for accuracy.  Now these services only really work if you are seeking verbatim transcriptions without coding or additional notes.  I think, in our research group, it came down to a couple of key questions:

1. Do we really need a transcription?

2. Okay if we really need one, does it have to be verbatim?

3. Does it need coding and key observations noted? (For audio-only, this might look like pauses, sighs, or “uhmm,” for video files there are other codes that might be of interest.)

As it turned out…as a team we decided that we were more interested in learning about particular incidences than reading the transcription through, and then coding.  So instead of taking time to type word-for-word the conversation, we noted moments of interest and pulled out quotes (and notes) that were of particular interest. I suppose you could call this gist transcribing (Paulus, Lester, & Dempster, 2013).  Our goal moved away from analyzing transcripts to really understanding a specific instance.

Also, by not outsourcing our transcription we had to listen to the conversations over and over and over and over again.  It was super annoying at points…but at the end of the day we all began noticing nuanced moments we might have otherwise missed.  I think this was to our advantage. Had we told someone (or a software) to transcribe our data we might have ended up with an autocorrect mistake! You never know when quals can quake and Hindex value become jinxed.

 References

Johnson, B.E. (2011). The speed and accuracy of voice recognition softwareassisted transcription versus the listen-and-type method: A research note. Qualitative Research 11(1), 91-97.

Paulus, T. M., Lester, J. N., & Dempster, P. (2013). Digital tools for qualitative research.  London, UK: Sage.

 

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Published from a mobile device. Erroneous words are a feature, not a typo.