4.4.2　Video Recordings

Four sessions from each year’s seminars were observed and video recorded, in order to preserve data and to analyse and compare how these Chinese Humanities students in different years performed, negotiated and developed disciplinary identities in classroom discourse.These video recordings were carried out with permission from each of the participants.Concerning the ethical issues, I first sent out the consent emails to all non-Chinese seminar tutors in the School of IC in order to get permission to video record in the classroom.Three of them agreed with the conduct, but meanwhile they refused to be filmed more than one time for each seminar.Then, I obtained the list of all the students from the all four years from the three tutors and emailed each of the students, explaining my research and requesting for their willingness of participation.It turned out that there was no objection received.

The total video-recording length of the four seminars was four and half an hours.Before implementing the video recording in each classroom, I gave each of the participants in the classrooms an information sheet and requested them to sign a participant consent form.In order to capture the classroom activities, and the images and discourse from clear angles, I set up two HD-recorders in the front and back of the classrooms respectively.One camera in the front recorded the students, while the other one in the back focused on the tutors and the slides on the whiteboards.At the same time, I put two external audio recorders on the front and back tables to record the conversations as clearly as possible.Again, the placement of the recorders received no objections from all participants in the classrooms.During the time of video recording, I was a non-participant observer, sitting in the corner of the classrooms, observing and taking brief notes on every student’s and tutor’s classroom engagement.After the seminars, I requested the relevant handouts and slides from the tutors, in case the video-recordings had not recorded the learning contents shown on the screen clearly.