Learning by Collaborative Analysis of Digital Video in Distributed Groups

Video is taken advantage of in different educational settings. In the simplest cases, teachers might present movies on video to their students in the classroom. In more advanced cases, videos might be made during exercise and training in order to provide visual and dynamic feedback to the trainees, for example. In educational settings, very often videos are watched, commented on and analyzed in face-to-face groups. Since more and more frequently educational settings involve learning in distributed groups, the question comes up, how one could take advantage of video in groups in which the members communicate and cooperate by means of networked computers. In this paper we describe v-share, an Internet-based software package that allows for the sharing of digital videos in distributed groups. By means of v-share, members of distributed groups are able to interactively select sequences of digital videos for collaborative annotation, analysis and reflection.