How do we Capture and Analyse Student Engineering Processes using Video Ethnography?

This paper presents the results of research on developing a method for capturing and analysing student engineering processes. The focus of the study was students in primary schools. By using a video-ethnographical approach to capturing individual and group engineering processes, it was possible to develop a coding scheme to capture students’ engineering subprocesses. The findings indicate that a meaningful analysis should distinguish between students’ physical activities and verbal communication since physical and verbal activities can be present simultaneously but apply to different subprocesses. The study uses an engineering design model with seven subprocesses. The development of the coding scheme shows that these subprocesses are not as distinct as the theory suggests, either in their descriptions or their relative order. Furthermore, our research shows that some engineering subprocesses may overlap and some processes appear mostly as verbal while others appear as physical. We found video-ethnographical analysis to be a useful tool for exploring group engineering subprocesses from the student’s perspective. These findings may be valuable to researchers interested in student-centred engineering processes or to teachers evaluating engineering teaching.