Video-based mind maps in higher education: A design-based research study of pre-service teachers' co-construction of shared knowledge

In this design-based study first-year pre-service teachers co-constructed video-based mind maps as part of a pedagogy course. The students produced self-made group videos and uploaded them to a joint platform before working with peers' group videos in a mind map structure. The course topic was learning sciences research, and the goal was to create a shared understanding about the course content before an upcoming exam. The study has been grounded in a sociocultural perspective on human activity and learning, employing interaction analysis to investigate how digital tools can support students' collaborative reading and understanding of key concepts in academic literature. By scrutinising video recordings of both in-room and on-screen activities, we analyse how five groups of pre-service teachers collaborated during the co-construction of videos, and how they interacted with fellow students' group videos. Findings demonstrate that the students interacted intently with each other's work and constituted the mind map as a point of convergence and resource for meaning making and collaboration within the student class community. The study shows that video-based mind maps can provide material and social structures for collaboration and that fellow students' group videos formed knowledge objects that generated in-depth conversations among peers about the subject matter.