Description of coding methods
Student comments on individual videos were coded in two ways, by a
single coder (LMG): 1) Overall Attitude: neutral, positive, negative (a
comment could be categorized as positive and negative if it included
statements of both types), or irrelevant (containing comments not
pertaining to the assignment or video); and 2) Specific Comments:
including specific types of positive, negative, or neutral statements. A
comment receiving a code of ‘positive’ in the Overall Attitude was then
also coded with at least one specific positive code. Similarly, a
‘negative’ Overall Attitude comment was coded to at least one specific
negative code. A comment that was marked as both positive and negative
overall received at least one specific negative code and at least one
specific positive code. Comments were marked as neutral if they included
statements such as “It was ok” or “The video was fine” without any
clarifying detail. Neutral specific comments largely corresponded to how
students used the video. These comments related to the speed at which
the video was watched, how many times the video was watched, whether a
transcript or captions were utilized, etc. While these comments were
often associated with positive or negative statements (ex. “It was
really confusing, I wouldn’t have understood all the jargon without the
captions.”) they are not themselves positive or negative and so were
coded separately. Table 3 summarizes the coding schema for
evaluation of student comments.
Student comments on the video homework structure were also solicited on
the anonymous end-of-quarter course evaluations. These comments were
coded in a similar manner as the individual video comments, including
both an Overall Attitude code and specific positive, negative, and
neutral codes. Since the nature of the comments differed, the specific
comment codes also differed, though many were similar to those for the
individual video comments (Table 3 ).