Feasibility of voice recording and transcription for classroom dynamics assessment

Introduction: Classroom dynamics is important for promoting student‟s cognitive domains but has not been empirically assessed. Voice recordings in a classroom by students are common and could offer unique information potentially useful for assessing classroom discussion.

Objectives: To explore the feasibility of voice recording and transcription as a tool to assess classroom discussion and to identify pitfalls and/or opportunities for improvement.

Methods: Five graduate students in the Health Systems and Universal Coverage course were asked to do voice recording while attending the course (two students were randomly assigned for each session). They then perform detailed transcription to be quantitatively analyzed using character counts. Focus group discussion with the students and instructors was also performed to identify pitfalls and/or opportunities for improvement. Thematic content analysis was used for qualitative data analysis.

Results: On average, each lecture session resulted in 20.57 pages (95% CI 17.72 to 23.43) and 49,863 characters (95% CI 42,516 to 57,210) of voice transcription files. There were no statistically significantly different numbers of pages and characters between the two transcribers (p=0.866 and 0.8021). The median percentages of class discussion domination by the instructors based on number of pages and characters were 94.74% and 97.44%, respectively.