Group Analysis Study
Client: Signe Kastberg

Signe Kastberg, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, has included video analysis within her curriculum. During a lab exercise, her students were broken down into six small groups, then assigned a team-building activity. Her plan was to record each group during a team-building assignment, which can later be analyzed by students for both verbal and non-verbal communication. The project was designed to help students answer the important question, “How am I doing as a group member?”

Professor Kastberg first approached ITS last year asking for help in designing the technology requirements of her project. At that time, ITS developed a plan to videotape each group session and place the compressed video online for each student to analyze.

Professor Kastberg surveyed the students after completion of the activity in order to see the effectiveness of this technology in achieving her learning objectives. While it was a great success overall, the students rightly pointed out that with only one camera angle, some students always had their backs to the camera. Consequently, many subtleties of the interaction could not be observed.

Aiming to improve the year old design, ITS introduced a second video camera. A total of six hours of video had to be captured totaling 73.4 Gigabytes. Then, using FinalCutPro, both camera angles were synchronized. We exported the video using Compress as 320 x 240 pixel MPEG4 video clips with a frame rate of 29.97 per sec. Using LiveStagePro, we authored a standalone QuickTime file containing both camera views aligned side-by-side. Finally, we copied all the QuickTime files on a CD-ROM, which was sent to ITS’ Instructional Graphic Services for duplication services.

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