Replacing a 2,000-word formative essay with a short video or visual presentation. That’s the challenge that Dr Sivaramjani Thambisetty set to undergraduate students on her Intellectual Property Law course.

But why do that?

Representing ideas and concepts

Siva’s aim was to offer an alternative way of explaining complex ideas through the use of still (Prezi presentations or similar) or moving images (short videos), thus following the idea that a picture is worth a thousand words.

“I hope it will be an enjoyable learning exercise in choosing apt non-textual forms of expressions for complicated ideas which is increasingly becoming second nature online for the remix generation”

Benefits for students

  • skills : students got to develop (new) skills such as presenting information, explaining complex ideas, which are transferable to their everyday and work life. They were given the opportunity to learn and/or refine useful digital skills (video production, using presentation software). May also saw it as an occasion to express their creativity.

More than 80% of students interviewed said they either learnt and used new or existing digital skills in completing this assignment

SpeechBubble

‘I didn’t know about Piktochart before starting this assignment, it’s a very useful tool!’

SpeechBubble‘Never knew what Prezi and   info-graphs were prior to this assignment. So it was quite interesting to think about and present legal questions/answers visually.’
  • recognition and achievement : students  came up with a final product, giving them a sense of achievement, and were able to share their production with their peers in a Moodle database but also online using sites such as Prezi, Youtube or Vimeo

Examples of final products:  Canva – Piktochart – Prezi

  • sharing and collaboration: students got to see and provide feedback on each other’s work and share it on the web.  This project also opened up the possibility for the teacher to use the final products as supporting material for future students

More information can be found on Dr Thambisetty’s slides from her project outcome presentation in one of our Show and Tell.

Get your students to produce content!

This project was funded by a Student as Producers LTI Grant. Visit our pages to find out more about this strand and others to bring innovation to teaching and learning using new technologies.