Automatic content analysis in collaborative inquiry-based learning

In the field of science education, content analysis is a popular way to analyse collaborative inquiry-based learning (CIBL) processes. However, content analysis is time-consuming when conducted by humans. In this paper, we introduce an automatic content analysis method to identify the different inquiry-based learning (IBL) phases from authentic student face-to-face discussions. We illustrate the potential of automatic content analysis by comparing the results of manual content analysis (conducted by humans) and automatic content analysis (conducted by computers). Both the manual and automatic content analyses were based on manual transcriptions of 11 groups’ CIBL processes. Two researchers …