Multimedia and student activity: An interpretive study using VideoSearch

Abstract

The allocation of time to different student activities in formal university settings, has been a subject of interest to researchers in recent years. As part of an interpretive study into how students use interactive multimedia, small groups of students were videotaped using an interactive multimedia program based upon a framework of situated learning. The purpose of the study was to determine whether students spent the major part of their time attending to the program-as some studies suggest this is common in tertiary education settings-or whether they actively participated in the learning process.

The data was analysed using VideoSearch, a software program which facilitates analysis of qualitative data by coding excerpts of videotaped material into user-defined categories. The program enables coding from a digitised video source by selecting a segment of the video and attaching a category to it. The findings of the study suggest that an interactive multimedia program based on a situated learning model is conducive to promoting important student activities such as articulation and reflection.