Fostering Collaboration and Developing Higher-Order Thinking with Digital Video

This study examined the role of digital video in supporting higher order thinking processes through various types of adolescent student collaboration in a digital documentary project. Understanding how new technologies such as digital video expands our concepts of literacy is critical to our appreciation of how it shapes the instructional and learning process, especially in promoting the development of 21st century skills. Constructivist theory provided a theoretical framework for this study. I used interpretive methods in an open-ended middle school environment to study and explain collaborative group processes in a digital documentary project. My goal was to understand the role that collaborative and active learning plays in shaping problem solving and other higher order thinking while examining how the creation of digital documentaries can be used to foster higher order thinking.