Video – notes from the reading group

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Hannah read ‘Motivation and Cognitive Strategies in the Choice to Attend Lectures or Watch them Online‘ by John N Bassilli. It was quite a in depth study but the main points were:

  • The notion of watching lectures online has a positive reaction from those who enjoy the course and find it important, but also from those who don’t want to learn in interaction with peers and aren’t inclined to monitor their learning.
  • From the above groups, the first group is likely to watch lectures online in addition to attending them face-to-face, whereas the second group are likely to replace face-to-face interaction with online study.
  • The attitude towards watching lectures online is related to motivation (ie. those who are motivated to do the course anyway are enthusiastic about extra learning opportunities), whereas the actual choice to watch them is related to cognitive strategies.
  • There is no demonstrable relation between online lecture capture and exam performance, but often the locus of control felt by students is marginally higher if they have the option to access lectures online.

Amy recommended Lifesaver (Flash required) as an amazing example of how interactive video can be used to teach.

Suzi read three short items which lead me to think about what video is good for. Themes that came up repeatedly were:

  • People look to video to provide something more like personal interaction and (maybe for that reason) to motivate students.
  • Videos cannot be skimmed – an important (and overlooked) difference compared to text.

The first two items were case studies in the use of video to boost learning, both in the proceedings of ASCILITE 2016.

Learning through video production – an instructional strategy for promoting active learning in a biology course, Jinlu Wu, National University of Singapore. Aim: enhance intrinsic motivation by ensuring autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Student video project in (theoretically) cross-disciplinary teams. Select a cell / aspect of a cell, build a 3D model, make a short video using the model and other materials, write a report on the scientific content and rationale for the video production. Students did well, enjoyed it, felt they were learning and seem to have learn more. Interesting points:

  • Students spent much longer on it than they were required to
  • Nearly 400 students on the module (I would like to have heard more about how they handled the marking)

Video-based feedback: path toward student-centred learning, Cedomir Gladovic, Holmesglen Institute. Aim: increase the student’s own motivation and enhance the possibility for self-assessment and reflection. They want to promote the idea of feedback as a conversation. Tutor talking over students online submission (main image) with webcam (corner image). Students like it but a drawback is that they can’t skim feedback. Interesting points:

  • How would tutors feel about this?
  • Has anyone compared webcam / no webcam?
  • Suggested video length <5 mins if viewed on smartphone, <10 mins if viewed on monitor

Here’s a simple way to boost your learning from videos: the “prequestion” looks at the effect of testing whether students remember more about specific questions and more generally when they are given prequestions on a short video. Answer seems to be yes on both counts. They thought that prequestions were particularly useful for short videos because students can’t easily skim through to just those topics.

Roger read “Using video in pedagogy”, an article from the Columbia University Center for Teaching and learning.

The article primarily focuses on the use of video as a tool for teacher reflection. The lecturer in question teaches Russian and was being observed. As she teaches in the target language which her observer didn’t speak her original motivation was to make the recording then talk the observer through what was happening. In actual fact she discovered additional benefits she had not envisaged. For example she was able to quantify how much time she was speaking compared to the students (as an important objective is to get students speaking as much as possible in the target language, and the teacher less). Secondly she could analyse and reflect on student use of the vocabulary and structures they had been taught. Thirdly it helped her to reflect on her own “quirks and mannerisms” and how these affected students. Finally the video provided evidence that actually contradicted her impressions of how an activity had gone . At the time she had felt it didn’t go well, but on reviewing the video afterwards she actually saw that it had been effective.

Suggested reading

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