Student Gaze in Response to a Chalkboard 1 Running head: STUDENT GAZE IN RESPONSE TO A CHALKBOARD

Student Gaze in Response to a Chalkboard Michelle Zyrowski Oakland University-IST 770 Dr. McEneaney May 30, 2012

Student Gaze in Response to a Chalkboard 2 Student Gaze in Response to a Chalkboard Background/Objectives/Purpose: As teachers lecture to their classrooms, they see a variety of behaviors. Some students devote their gaze directly to the teacher, some staring off into space, some even with their heads down. Even though we all know lecture is not the desired format for disseminating information to students, as "Lecturing tends to foster passivity on the part of students and to limit intellectual activity to memorization and recall, it is necessary at times to provide this type of direct instruction (Litecky, 1998, p.7). However, adding visuals such as a chalkboard, white board or even a smart board with projector are all ways of engaging student interest and focusing their attention during lecture time where it is crucial that students receive information. For example, in a similar 2011 study involving video data, Bruce, McPherson, Sabeti & Flynn found that visuals (in this case an interactive whiteboard) did have an overall positive influence on the learning outcomes of students as evidenced by the 692 productive instances of whiteboard use in comparison to only 71 problematic instances. However, this differs significantly from a chalkboard which is what most teachers in modest districts have in their classrooms according to a study by Bush & Johnstone (2000) in which they recorded that the predominant teacher materials used in their classrooms "were the chalkboard (73%) and overhead (46%)," (p.4). Knowing this is still the reality for most teachers, this particular research study asks the question: Do students look at the teacher more when writing on the board or when the teacher is not writing on the board? To answer this question the Eudico Linguistic Annotator (ELAN) was used to systematically code and analyze the video data (Helwig, 2011). Here a grounded theory approach was used to first capture the data and use it to begin to make correlations about student attention (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Using a constructivist theoretical framework and Flemings (2006) visual learning styles, student's attention will be defined in this study by how much they look at the teacher. This is supported in a study done by Bayliss, Bartlett, Naughtin, Kritikos (2010) in which their research shows that: Personally and socially relevant information of great importance can be gleaned from monitoring the attention systems of other people by determining their gaze direction. Following the gaze of another person and thus establishing "joint attention" could yield new information about useful objects or resources in the environment. Further, joint attention affords the generation of inferences about the mental state of the other person (p.635). Similar types of indicators were also used in Bush & Johnstone's (2000) study which classified student behaviors such as sleeping, daydreaming, talking to peers about non-class matters and making noise as to disrupt the class as being non-engaged. Student behaviors that supported engagement included looking at the teacher, responding to the teacher's questions, raising their own questions and working collaboratively to explore class ideas. These forms of attention also fit into a constructivist framework in which students actively participate in their own learning (Gibels, Van de Watering, Dochy, & Van den Bossche, 2006, p.214).

Student Gaze in Response to a Chalkboard 3 Method: A teachers Advanced Placement Literature and Composition 12th grade classroom in a Southeastern Michigan school was recorded for this study, in which two students were selected to be observed as a purposive sample of convenience. Interaction analysis was used as a methodological framework in coding the interactions between the students and the teacher during the sampled video (Amidon, 1968, p.158).Their attention to the teacher (for the purposes of this study) was defined by the frequency and the duration of when they looked at the teacher, or participated in other non-engaging activities such as putting their head down or talking to other students while the teacher was talking. These activities were recorded during two, four minute clips- one in which the teacher was primarily writing on the board, and one in which they were just lecturing. Initial coding took place using ELAN (Fig.1) by making the following tiers and controlled vocabularies: Tier Name: Tier 1: Teacher writing on the board Tier 2: Student 1 gaze Controlled Vocabularies: Tier 3: Student 2 gaze Tier 4: Teacher verbalizations teacher writing on the board teacher not writing on the board looking at teacher/board Description & Examples: teacher writes important terms on the chalkboard teacher is still talking but NOT writing on the board Head is clearly turned toward the front of the room where the chalkboard and teacher are located. Head is in a natural position, NOT facing the front Forehead down on the desk, not looking at teacher (same as student 1) "Ok, characterization." "So we have theme and tone so far" "You will have 5 min. to prepare" "Ok, you will have time to talk later." "Yes, that will depend on the prompt" "Ok, theme might be addressed." "Who remembers the first step in attacking the prompt?"

looking at their desk(default) head completely down on the desk (same as student 1) acknowledges student answer summarizes previous points explains assignment redirects attention answers students questions responds to student asks a question

Overlapping tiers were also used to determine the interaction between codes. For example, the teacher writing on the board was overlapped with both student one and twos gaze to see how the board may have influenced the students gaze patterns. Gaze was also overlapped with teacher verbalizations to see which types of verbalizations elicited increased student gaze.

Student Gaze in Response to a Chalkboard 4 Inter-rater reliability was then established through having peers code each tier for these behaviors as well, and interlaying their codes with the researchers original codes. Cohens Kappa (1960) was then used to determine a 68% reliability. Once primary codes were established, ELAN software was used to tabulate the number of times each student looked at the teacher while writing on the board or not writing on the board, in addition to correlations between Figure 1. Screenshot of ELAN displaying attention, duration of gaze and verbalizations. Results:
an example video on the left side, the audio recognizer below it and the coding tiers at the bottom.

When each 4 minute segment was examined it was easy to see that students looked at the board/teacher more during the first segment when the teacher was primarily writing on the board. For example, student one only looked at the teacher once for a 15 second duration during the second segment; the rest of the time their head was laid on the desk. Student two had a similar response, only looking at the teacher twice, for a total duration of 54 seconds during this second segment (Fig. 2). The rest of the time they were looking at the paper on their desk or rifling through their folder. When looking at verbalizations during this time, it was Figure 2. Compares the duration of seconds each student interesting to see that in the majority of the spent looking at the teacher/board when the teacher was time during this second segment the teacher actively wring on the board (Segment 1) and when she was going over an assignment, where as was not (Segment 2). during the first segment the teacher was asking questions in addition to writing on the board. It is important to note that the use of the chalkboard may not have been the only stimulus promoting increased student gaze, but also the fact that the teacher was posing questions to the class and expected responses. This is supported by the fact that when overlapping the verbalization tier and the teacher writing on the board tier, 6 times the teacher was both writing on the board and asking a question, which occurred the most out of any other verbalization category. When looking at segment one specifically, the data also supports increased student attention during the times of writing on the board and questioning. Out of 11 occurrences of the teacher writing on the board, both students were looking up at the teacher/board 4 times and at least one student was looking up at the board/teacher 10 times during this period. Also, there were only 4 occurrences between both students of when the teacher was writing on the board and students were not looking. Total duration for student one looking at the teacher/board during this first 4 minute (240 second) segment was 128 seconds, and student two looked at the teacher/board for 175 seconds during this first segment (Fig.2). This tells us that for the majority of times, the teacher was able to hold the students gaze by using the chalkboard, in addition to a questioning strategy.

Student Gaze in Response to a Chalkboard 5 However, when examining each student individually, the data varies. Total times for student 1 looking at the teacher throughout both segments was 18. Out of these occurrences, 7 times involved the teacher writing on the board, which would suggest that the board did not make much difference in if the student chose to look or not. Looking at duration, the students longest gaze was 43 seconds which occurred during a questioning period in which the teacher was also writing on the board. However, the student had 3 occurrences of placing their head on the desk, adding up to 163 seconds spent in this inactive manner. Correlating verbalizations during this head down period for student 1, the teacher was explaining the assignment 2 times and answering another students question the third time. Total times for student 2 looking at the teacher for both segments was 14 times. Out of these occurrences, 7 times involved the teacher writing on the board, which again is only 50% of the time. Looking at duration, the students longest gaze was for 38 seconds during a questioning period. However, this student had comparably longer gaze times then student 1, averaging 15 seconds each gaze. Verbalization codes that caused both students to look at the teacher the most were: Questioning (6), Summarizing (5) and Acknowledging student answer (1). This again alludes to the fact that teacher questioning elicited more student gaze, as the students were expected to actively participate. Conclusion: Overall, the duration of students teacher directed gaze in this study did increase during times when the teacher was writing on the board, in tandem with using a questioning strategy. However, the following limitations must be examined: 1) This was a small case study that cannot be overly generalizable to large populations due to the small number of participants. It also is not completely representative of this one teachers classroom as more recordings on different days over a larger span of time would be needed to truly determine a classroom impact on using the chalkboard as a visual. 2) This study would also benefit from examining several types of visuals (projectors, interactive white boards, overhead projectors) to see which one captures student gaze the most. 3) More controls would need to be established to ensure that students were directing their gaze to the teacher because of the necessity to learn information. In this situation, some students had handouts in front of them, which was likely to hold their gaze instead of the teacher. At times, they may not have been looking at the teacher because they were reading the handout, or as in the case of student 1 putting their head down, they may have thought they could just refer to the handout later instead of following along with the teacher. 4) Also, better video data quality is necessary to truly see the angle of a students gaze, by using multiple recorders in different locations around the classroom. 5) Finally, a last limitation of this study is that students may still be paying attention, even if they are not actively looking at the instructor. Gaze is just one portion of how we devote our attention. Most importantly, this study reveals a minute snapshot into the workings of a teachers classroom and encourages teachers to use multimodal learning when delivering content to students in order to keep them actively engaged. Resources Amidon, E.J. (1968). Interaction Analysis. Theory into Practice, 158-167.

Student Gaze in Response to a Chalkboard 6 Bayliss, A.P., Bartlett, J., Naughtin, C.K., & Kritikos, A. (2011). A direct link between gaze perception and social attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 37, 634-644. Bush, J.M., Johnstone, W.G.(2000). An observation evaluation of high school A/B block classes: Variety of Monotony? Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (New Orleans, Louisiana, April 24-28, 2000). Cohen, J. (1960). A coefficient for agreement for nominal scales. Educational and Psychological Measurement 20, 37-46. Fleming, N., and Baume, D. (2006) Learning Styles Again: VARKing up the right tree! Educational Developments, 7, 4-7. Gibels, D. Van de Watering, G. Dochy, F. & Van den Bossche, P. (2006). New Learning environments and constructivism: The students perspective. Instructional Science 34, 213-226. Glaser, B. & Strauss, A. (1967). Discovery of Grounded Theory. Chicago: Aldine. Helwig, B. (2011). EUDICO Linguistic Annotator (Version 4.1) [Computer software and manual]. Retrieved May 25, 2011 from http://www.lat-mpi.eu/tools/elan/.