Jennifer Gonyea
Students want to engage with material instead of listening to lectures or passively reading content (Roehl, Reddy, & Shannon, 2013); and consistently report that faculty use technology ineffectively (Burkley & Burkley, 2009; Price, 2009). Creative, integrative writing assignments that require technology meet student demands for interaction with faculty and with each other (Kotz, 2016) while assisting them in thinking critically about course content. This poster presents an assessment of both the degree of engagement between students and the level of critical thinking skills demonstrated by video log assignments that are designed to have students integrate course content, substantiate arguments, and broaden their perspectives. Video log assignments require students to select a perspective from which to make their argument and then select a peer’s video from the opposing viewpoint to engage the other student in a conversation about the topic. Student videos and responses from a summer online section and two fall in-person sections of the same course were evaluated according to Bloom’s taxonomy of learning (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2000) using Quick Flip Questions for the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (Barton, 2007) in order to assess the levels of critical thinking represened in student video logs and responses using two separate raters (Cohen’s κ = .92). The findings indicate students use more higher order thinking language in later video logs when compared to early video log submissions. Currently, the level of critical thinking in video logs in the online section is being compared to those in the in-person section, using Bloom’s taxonomy of levels of cognition. The log responses were also coded according for the degree of student engagement measures as whether or not the responder: used information from the original post (OP) to further the conversation; added new information in their response; and interacted with the OP and other responders (number of interactions). These data are currently being analyzed to compare the level of engagement in e-courses to that of in-person courses with regard to the degree of engagement between students in both the online and in-person sections.
