Participatory Media Literacy in Collaborative Video Annotation

Collaborative Video Annotation (CVA) is a kludge where learners annotate video together, experiencing both the video and each other’s annotations in a dynamic discussion. Three scenes from small group CVA discussions were selected for analysis from 14 CVA discussions where 8–12 learners interacted via the annotation tool on top of a video. The twenty-second scenes were analyzed for semiotic meaning-making practices and this revealed a variety of participatory media literacy levels among these undergraduates. Topics of discussions were related but not identical, and the selected exemplars showed a range of attention to communicative features of the media. Discussions evolved in dramatically different ways due to the interplay of images, text, and learner choices. Results suggest that converged media require new literacies educators would be wise to explore and wiser still to educate our learners about.