Event Report
WRLTF 11th April 2018
On wednesday
11th April we were very pleased to welcome the White Rose Learning
Technologists’ Forum back the University of Sheffield, for a specially themed
meeting looking at the use of video in learning and teaching. We had an
excellent turnout, with colleagues from every HE institution in the region
attending, as well as those from the regional health service, and our corporate
members.
Scaling up and new opportunities with the Kaltura
Digital Media Hub - Graham McElearney, The University of Sheffield
I was fortunate
to open the session, presenting a summary of a large scale project I’ve been
leading on, to scope and implement a new media hosting system. Like many
universities, our requirements for delivering video have matured along with the
technologies over the last 15 years. This had resulted in us having a fragmented collection of technologies in
place, which we wanted to consolidate
for our current and future needs.
As part of our
implementation we conducted a series of pilots with specific colleagues around
the Institution. This enabled us to test some key functionality of the system,
but also led to some unexpected benefits.
One of our key
requirements was to enable student submission of videos they create for
assessments. We have struggled with this for several years, having employed a
number of inadequate work arounds. Using the Kaltura Building Block in
Blackboard, students are now able to submit their work directly into the VLE.
Not only is this a more robust and secure system than some of the other
workarounds we tried, it also means that the work is in the VLE ecosystem and
can then be graded electronically. This led to our second key finding - the
Kaltura platform has an associated content creation tool, CaptureSpace, which
allows the creation of screencasts and webcam recordings, and is accessible
from anywhere within the VLE. This has now enabled a number of colleagues to
use this for creating audio, video and screencast feedback in different disciplines.
The idea of creating rich media feedback has been around for quite some time,
but it has always seemed to be logistically challenging - not so much in terms
of creating the media, but in managing the process of returning the feedback to
the students in an effective manner.
A third
unexpected benefit we’ve relied with Kaltura has been the ability to create
video quizzes. These are videos that pause at certain point and pose MCQ
questions to the students. These can be purely formative or can be linked to
the Grade Centre in Blackboard. This new feature has been trialled in a number
of departments so far, most notably Geography, who are using it for pre-lab
briefing and testing with level 1 students. It’s early days with this feature
but we can see many applications for it. A fourth benefit we are seeing across
campus is the use of CaptureSpace to produce flipped learning content, and this
was the topic of our final session, discussed below.
Video and
presentation available at
Video to support learning and teaching at The
University of York - Wayne Britcliffe, The University of York
Next up up was
Wayne Britcliffe from the University of York, who presented on the use of video
across the Institution, and in a range of different contexts.
One of the key
ways that colleagues in York used video was to help prepare students for
laboratory classes. I think this is a classic use for video that is relevant
for many Institutions - we often face the problem that our student cohorts have
vastly outgrown the lab facilities we have, often built decades before to
accommodate a fraction of the number of students. We can’t just dispense with
lab teaching, but we do need to make it more effective. Providing essential
briefing on say equipment use, health and safety etc, can really help to make
the time spent in the lab more effective, and can also help compensate for a
variety in previous experience that ours students may have. Labs supported were
in chemistry, biology and archaeology, and the videos themselves were created
by students. Using the resource of talented students in this manner seems like
an excellent way of getting high quality videos made within reasonable cost -
the latter of which can be areal barrier to using media in teaching.
Another key use
of video was to support flipped learning, and Wayne showed us examples from
Computer Science and Economics. Wayne reported that lecturers found this a
satisfying experience, but one challenge they found was how to make the best
use of the face to face time, after the students had watched the pre-class
videos. This seems like a very important issue for us as learning technologists
- we possibly naturally focus on both the means of producing the video content,
and how we deliver this to the students - perhaps now we should be focusing
more attention to what activities take place in class.
A final example
of Wayne’s work at York addresses another challenge we certainly face here in
Sheffield, which is how to record lectures for mathematically based subjects
who traditionally make extensive use of a black/whiteboard for writing out
mathematical notation. Conventional lecture recording solutions presume an
approach based around the use of a “PowerPoint” type presentation as being at
the core of a lecture, although for many maths-based disciplines, this is
unsuitable. York now have two rooms in which the have cameras that are linked
to pressure pads built into the lecture theatre floor, which enables the
cameras to follow the lecturers writing as they traverse the often large
blackboards used in these subjects - something we shall certainly investigate
here as there is much demand for this solution.
Video and
presentation available at
Using video to enhance music education - Ruth
Clark and Mark Rogers, Leeds College of Music
Our third
presentation was from Ruth Clarke and Mark from Leeds College of Music (LCM).
They too presented a range of approaches used across the College, but it was
interesting to see how the were used in a rather more specialised environment
of a music college.
LCM are using
Panopto to great effect, and have licensed the software recorder for all 1200
staff and students across the College, which means video creation is truly
accessible to all. One interesting aspect of their niche us of the Panopto
system was their requirement for very high quality audio - this is something
that we might not normally consider for conventional lecture recording system,
which is designed for speech, screen capture and occasionally video capture.
However for music this is critical, and so LCM and Panopto worked hard to make
sure this was of a high enough quality and could respond to a full range of
frequencies and dynamics as found in a wide range of musical styles.
One key
application of video, over and above lecture recordings, was once again to
provide information in advance of lectures. With a higher proportion of
learners with dyslexia than average, students respond very well to these when
provided in video or audio format. Screencast recording hare also extensively
used, to teach aspects of music writing a production software. Some of these
software packages have quite intricate workflows and so these also provide
standardised guidance on best practices for these. This is particularly
important with music software, as there is a huge proliferation of this kind of
content publicly available o(e.g., on YouTube), but with no guarantee that the
approaches demonstrated are the correct or best ways of working.
In a final
example from LCM, students use their access to the recording tools in Panopto
to enable them to record a wide range of activities that enable them to reflect
on their own performance. In addition they’re able to gather evidence from
their community music projects and placements, which helps to solve a range of
logistics and safeguarding issues.
Video and
presentation available at
Assessing student media assignments - Rob Pashley,
The University of Sheffield
Our fourth talk
was from my colleague Rob Pashley in our Creative Media Team (CMT) here at
Sheffield. The CMT’s function is dedicated to providing media production skills
to students. The majority of this is embedded within academic modules, in which
students create videos as a different form of assessment from a conventional
essay, exam or presentation. We know from evaluations conducted over a
substantial period of time that encouraging students to create videos about
their academic disciplines is a fantastic way for them to develop their own
subject knowledge. This activity is supported via practical workshops that
enable a a standardisation of skills training, similar to that discussed by our
colleagues from Leeds, above, and is further enabled by having an equipment
loan service (cameras, microphones etc), and by providing access to the
necessary editing and post production facilities required to produce a finished
video.
None of our
students are media production students as such, and so this presents something
of a challenge, in terms of how we assess their work. It would not be
appropriate to judge the students too much on their technical craft skills in
the way that we might with media production students, and so we need to find
other meaningful ways of doing this. This is still a work in progress for us,
and it’s something we’ve been looking at in various forms for sometime, going
back to work we started with the Media Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group
back in 2008.
If not
assessing production skills per se, we can ask questions such as how well does
the video present the topic under consideration, and how well do the students
use the media format to explain concepts or elicit other responses from the
viewer.
Another key way
of assessing the work is via a reflective statement by the students - but on
what should they reflect? One key area is to ask them to articulate why they
have produced their videos the way they have. So what sorts of choices and
decisions did they make about how they presented their chosen topics, or how
they interpreted certain scenes, when looking at more literary/creative works.
At the heart of this, I think we also need to ask the students how they think
that engaging in a creative task has helped build their own subject knowledge,
and whether there is anything specifically different about working in a
creative medium such as video that enables them to build new understanding
about their subject that they otherwise wouldn't have.
This is very
exciting work and also very important, as doubts over how to access this work
can present a barrier to more academic colleagues from choosing to use
this exciting form of assessment with the
students.
Video and
presentation available at
A flipped-classroom math module for molecular
biology students - Dr Rebecca Barnes, The University of Sheffield
Our final
presentation of the session came from Rebecca Barnes, another Sheffield
colleague from our department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology. Rebecca
presented some work she had been doing, running a level one module aimed at
reducing maths anxiety for biology students. Maths anxiety is a well documented
problem for many students, and can cause real stress and hamper performance in subjects
such as biology, where maths may not be at the heart of the topic, but is
nonetheless a key enabler for many practical activities in this discipline.
Rebecca
produced a series of over 90 screencast videos for students to use. These are
designed to be watched by the students outside of class time, and this enables
students to work at their own pace and importantly, on their own, without the
fear of their peers seeing their lack of confidence and competence. More
generally I think this is a good lesson for level one students in terms of
taking a bit more ownership and control of their own learning that they may
have been used to at school.
Rebecca
deliberately recorded hand written screencasts using a stylus in Onenote, as
she felt that this dicated a sufficiently slow pace for students to be able to
keep up without being rushed. Crucially she also drew attention to the fact
that when recording flipped learning materials, it is really important to stay
enthusiastic and up beat throughout them, which can be a challenge if you are
spending a whole day recording them. Leaving plenty of time to create the
recordings was one of her key recommendations. Rebecca also flagged up the
issue of finding the most effective use of the face to face time as being an
area in which she was keen to develop.
Video and
presentation available at
Discussion and next meeting:
We spent some
time at the end of the meeting reflecting on the afternoon's presentations. It
seemed like a well balanced programme, ranging from broader Institutional
strategies and practices, but also focusing on some module specific practices
and the knotty issue of assessing video work by students. There seem to be some
convergence of practice now, such as providing video content to supplement lab
classes, and producing flipped learning materials. Supporting student generated
media content is of ever increasing importance as more and more we recognise
the value of harnessing students’ creativity here.
We also
explored a number of issues and barriers to wider adoption. There were some
familiar candidates here, such as inconsistent infrastructure to enable staff
to record their own media, including not having access to recording equipment,
and an absence of a comprehensive hosting and delivery platform to support this
type of activity. As ever, access to staff expertise to advise, train and
produce materials was also cited as a problem for many.
As is often the
case, it appears the solutions to these could be met with with further
investment by our Institutions, but as Nick Jeans (SERO Consulting Sheffield)
pointed out, in order to obtain this we need to be able to really demonstrate
the effectiveness of TEL to our senior managers.
This led neatly
onto our very final business of the day - the next meeting. We hope that this
will take place in Leeds in the early part of July - exact time and venue TBC.
However we have set the theme, and following on from the above, we are going to
look at “Measuring the effectiveness of technology enhanced learning” and we
welcome applications from colleagues to present at this. If you are interested
in doing a session here, please email g.mcelearney@sheffield.ac.uk.
