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 ).