Effects of instructional conditions and experience on student reflection: a video annotation study

ABSTRACT

This article reports on the findings of a study that investigated the effects of instructional conditions and prior experience on students’ self-reflection. The study was conducted with the use of a video annotation tool that was used by undergraduate performing arts students to reflect on their video-recorded performances. The study shows a consistent positive effect of previous experience with the video annotation tool for engagement with reflection. Graded instructional conditions with feedback had a positive effect on increasing higher order reflections particularly for students with prior experience with the video annotation tool for reflective purposes. The finding suggests that when including reflection in the curriculum, it is important to consider introducing it at a program or degree level rather than individual courses in order to provide an opportunity for students to gain experience with reflection and any particular tool that is used (e.g., a video annotation tool). Furthermore, reflective tasks should be scaffolded into the curriculum with ample opportunity for formative feedback and summative assessment in order to encourage higher order thinking and foster students’ metacognitive awareness and monitoring for increased goal-setting and acknowledgement of the motive or effect of their observed behavior.

KEYWORDS:

• Instructional conditions
• reflection
• self-reflection
• self-regulated learning
• video annotation

Acknowledgements

The views expressed in this publication/activity do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching. We would like to thank Daniyal Liaqat, Dennis Alonzo, and Bardia Mohabbati for their assistance with coding the annotation data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Negin Mirriahi http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4139-3149

Srećko Joksimović http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6999-3547

Dragan Gašević http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9265-1908

Shane Dawson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2435-2193

Notes

1 The volume of use is measured by the number of video annotations created and the amount of text produced in the video annotations.

Additional information

Funding

The study was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Discovery Grant) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Insight Grant). In addition, support for this publication/activity has been provided by the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching [grant number ID13-2901].