Virtual Classroom: Learning through Video Analysis

This video shows a brief glimpse into a high school physics classroom. Video clips like this are used as a focus for observation and discussion. In this clip, the teacher is facilitating a lesson on forces and teachers participating in the virtual classroom are looking for content storyline.

Watching and learning from colleagues in action provides a rich experience that cannot be duplicated by words on a page. The Virtual Classroom does just that as facilitators guide a group of teachers from all around the country in a synchronous environment. These virtual sessions allow teachers to observe and discuss video content together as a facilitator plays video of a teacher's instruction, pausing at different points throughout the video to allow for meaningful discussion. Teachers share what they saw and discuss evidence which may or may not support effective science teaching.

During NanoTeach, teachers look for strategies in the classroom that support a coherent content storyline. Reflecting on this experience and incorporating what they learned into their own practice will help transform science teaching. NanoTeach aims to help teachers:

  • Understand that a content storyline is important to connect student learning from initial ideas to subsequent ideas as students build a larger conceptual understanding
  • Recognize that video coding tools allow us to examine and reflect upon teacher/student interactions by identifying evidence of teacher practice to create their own mental model of what good instruction looks like
  • Apply elements of content storyline to strengthen lesson plans for implementation of nanoscience and technology during the spring semester.
Template for virtual classroom video review
Virtual Classroom Platform

NanoTeach adapted this video coding technique originally developed by Kathy Roth (BSCS) and the Tying Words to Images of Science Teaching (TWIST) project. "Using the science content storyline lens can help you teach science in more effective ways that promote student conceptual learning. The storyline consists of carefully chosen and sequenced science ideas that build on one another to illustrate a bigger picture (a big idea)" (Roth, 2009).