Images, Audio & Video

Embedding Student-Produced Videos in Courses: Why and How?

This academic year, LTI funded two projects to integrate student-produced videos in courses through their LTI Grant scheme. Outcomes and findings from their evaluation provide some interesting reflections on  how they can be used to bring added value to the learning – and teaching!- experience.

The Projects

Using Film in Urban Planning Analysis – Nancy Holman, Geography and Environment

The PlanneramanAs part of the Urban Policy and Planning course, students produce written work alongside a group presentation and a short interpretive film of neighbourhood fieldwork. Film-making started two years ago with students using their own devices. Last year they were helped by an LSE alumnus who is now a filmmaker to better understand the process of storytelling and how to use the equipment. This year, Nancy applied for DSLR kits to improve the quality of the work produced. An evening screening of the 8 short films produced by the project groups was also organised at the LSE, at the end of which a panel of ethnographers and filmmakers judged the films and awarded three prizes: Best Overall Film, Best Cinematography and Judges Choice.

Narrating the Death (and Life?) of Multiculturalism – Jennifer Jackson-Preece, European Institute

Jennifer wanted to “enliven the end of term debate on multiculturalism” in her Identity, Community and the ‘Problem’ of Minorities course by replacing group presentations with short films narrating the students’ take on the theme.  Instructor videos were made and presented during seminars and resources on making short documentaries were made available on the course’s Moodle page. Students then worked in groups for three weeks to produce their short films. The videos were screened during the last session of the course and were followed by a debate.

Reflections

Why videos?

In the Geography project, the combination of written work and film allowed students to think about spaces both on paper and visually, which according to Nancy is ” a core transferable skill our students need to develop”. She also believes that the video exercise had a “knock on benefit” on students’ summative essays, which she observed were clearer and more thoughtful.

This is what she highlighted in the description of the project for students:

Nancy

 

In the European Institute project, the resulting videos were used as a starter for a class debate. Videos were favoured in place of the usual presentations as Jennifer wanted students to approach the end of term presentations “from a fresh perspective that facilitates greater creativity and ownership of ideas

In both cases video production have been a good way of engaging student with the course and material and resulted in a final product that can be used as a basis for discussion or examples and inspiration for the future cohorts.

“It would also enable student cohorts on EU 458 to ‘speak’ to each other across time through the creation of a permanent film archive on the EU 458  Moodle page” – Jennifer Jackson-Preece

They are also easy to be shared and presented to the wider institution and community. Students from the Urban Planning group attended the JustSpace conference on opportunity areas where they showed their films.

Students also got to develop useful transferable skills in the process: managing a group project, collecting/gathering/presenting information, video production and editing to name a few.

Embedding video-production into the course

Nancy’s project was seen as a way to “further embed […] practical experiences [walks, fieldtrips] within the programme” while it would “enable students to gain a different/complementary perspective on the concept of narrative” for Jennifer. It was thus important for both to integrate video production as (part of) a final task towards which students worked during the course instead of as a stand alone activity.

JenniferAs highlighted in the description of the project, video production was gradually introduced in the Geography course. Students received the help from a professional filmmaker and were able to familiarise themselves with the equipment during a trip to Manchester in the first part of the year.

In Jennifer’s project, students received training in video-making face to face during seminars and through resources made available on Moodle.

Students were also made aware of the various ethical, safety and copyright considerations when filming, interviewing and using material other than theirs.

<= Resources on video production made available to EU458 students on Moodle

 

In terms of assessment, even though the video production exercise was formative for both projects, students received feedback on their work. Geography students received feedback on their overall presentation that included comments on the style and overall message of their video. Students from the European Institute course were given a template of the feedback form to be aware of the assessment criteria when producing their videos. They included design (style and organisation, creativity) and message (content, quality, overall impression).

Next year group videos will count as 50% of the EU458 summative assessment and adjustments will be made to the course to support this.

Interested in using student-produced content in your teaching?

Have a look at the past Students as Producers projects in our LTIG Grant Winners section or get in touch with us!

Read about LSE Innovator William Callahan‘s successful implementation of student-produced videos in his IR318 Visual International Politics Course.

 

 

Edtech: The student view on educational technology

Given the limited amount of innovative tools used in their studies, it is hard for students to actually know how technology could better their education.

Having reviewed all the interviews from our Student Voice project, we created a video highlighting a few of our key findings.

As the video suggests, a majority of students stated that PowerPoints are the main “technology” used in the classroom. Many added that, given the limited amount of innovative tools used in their studies, it was hard for them to actually know how technology could better their education.

That being said, students believed that technology – if used correctly – could challenge the current “one to many [educative] system”. The expression “one-to-many” refers to lectures where teachers talk and students listen, often giving the impression of a unidirectional information flow. Students stated that technology could be implemented to make lectures and classes more interactive, to foster teacher-students and student-student collaboration.

The video also suggests that students expect an increase in online pedagogical content. This includes more online courses and online exercises but also online exams. Students suggested that, to prepare them for the use of technology in their future career, more tasks should be carried out on line.

All findings are currently being written up and the full report will be available shortly!

The previous post can be found here

Students’ Expectations for the Future of Technology in Education

Last term, Learning Technology and Innovation (LTI) started a project involving three days of interviewing all over campus. We asked 100 students questions designed to gather their insight about what teaching, learning and technology could look like at LSE in 2020. The three-minute interviews, whether filmed or just audio recorded, have helped us start a conversation from the grassroots up about the future of innovation and education at the school.

We are currently reviewing the hours of footage gathered to create a short video and a report relaying the students’ voices about the future of technology in education. In the meantime, we have designed the following teaser to give you some insight into the project. This teaser is a compilation of the answers given to a single question: if you could describe, in one word, what you would expect from technology in the future what would it be?

I would like to end this post by thanking all the students that accepted to be interviewed, your feedback is tremendously helpful. Stay tuned for more updates and videos!

‘Capturing the Student Voice’

For the last two weeks, Helen, Maik (our cameraman) and I have been interviewing students all over campus. We asked 70 students a couple of questions designed to gather their insight about what teaching, learning and technology could look like at LSE in 2020. The three-minute interviews, whether filmed or just audio recorded, will help us start a conversation from the grassroots up about the future of innovation and education at the school.Student Voice

We aim to create, out of the many hours of footage we gathered, a short film relaying the students’ insight about the future of education at LSE. The video will also be accompanied by a report summarizing all the quotes and opinions we collected during our interviews. Our findings – both film and report – will be circulated internally to the heads of the different professional services.

I would like to end this post by thanking all the students that accepted to be interviewed, your feedback is and will be tremendously helpful! We are planning on carrying 30 extra interviews next week so if you or anyone you know wants to share their insight about the future of LSE, get in touch at: lti.support@lse.ac.uk

– Laurent

How effective are e-Marking and e-Feedback?

Catherine Hua Xiang

There are numerous methods and tools to mark and provide feedback using technology. Catherine Hua Xiang and Lourdes Hernandez-Martin from LSE’s Language Centre run an LTI-funded project* aimed at ‘exploring and comparing three distinctive e-marking methods and e-feedback as a result of three marking tools’

Lourdes Hernandez-Martin

More than 20 members of staff at the Language Centre were offered training on using Moodle, iPads with e-pens and Snagit to mark and provide feedback on students’ written work. They applied the three different marking methods to the same group of students throughout the academic year on different pieces of work (usually long essays).

They were then asked to write a reflective diary on the impact of these methods on the way they mark while students answered a survey to explore their perception of video and written feedback. The findings demonstrated a clear preference for video feedback using Snagit, which Catherine and Lourdes explained by providing the following reasons:

  1. Linguistic enhancement – Students have found being able to listen to teacher’s correct helps both pronunciation as well as overall listening skills.
  2. Personal approach – Students preferred the personal approach of a video feedback as it creates the style which is most similar to a face to face interaction. The teacher’s voice helps engage the students.
  3. Quality of the feedback – Students have commented on the details that verbal feedback could offer as opposed to the written feedback.
  4. Others – Students also commented on the usefulness of having both – the fact that they can come back and listen to the feedback at any time they wishes. It offers great materials for revision purposes.

“It is very helpful having the teacher guide me through the corrections as it is more personal and can allow me to see not just what is wrong but why it is wrong

“It’s much better to hear something directly rather than having to try and work things out from comments or notes written down”

“you can learn from home, rather than having to come in for office hours”

 

Snagit

Snagit Features

 

* From e-Marking to e-Feedback: Training, Applying and Evaluation, project funded by a Learning Technology and Innovation Grant. You can also find some information and updates on this project in the LSE Language Centre website.

 

Show and tell on students creating and sharing content

LTI show and tell on students as producers projects took place on the 30 April. Some common themes emerged amongst all the presentations which highlighted the importance of integrating the academic with the practical and embedding the projects into the assessment process.

Lecture capture of the event can be watched online and a summary of the presentations with the slides can be found below.
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BillProfessor Bill Callahan from International Relations presented on the changes to the Visual International Politics course IR318. Students were asked to work in small groups to produce and edit their own documentaries in order to combine academic analysis with the practical skills of documentary film making and give students an insight into the visual politics of IR. Professor Callahan worked with LTI to deliver five seminars on film production and gave students access to editing facilities. The final films were shared on a Vimeo group and showed in a final ‘film festival’ seminar. Feedback from the students was positive but many would like to increase the weighting of the film component from 25% to 50% of the final mark.

Slides from Dr Bill Callahan’s presentation

‘I have really enjoyed this course. The topics were very intellectually stimulating. I enjoyed the practical aspect the most although it was very challenging.’

Chinese New YearAn intergenerational story

 

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LeeDr Hyun-Jung Lee from the department of Management discussed the use of video in group work projects. Students on the post graduate courses ID419 and MG463 were put into groups with mixed backgrounds and had the option to create a short video to demonstrate case studies and theories on cross-cultural management.

Slides from Dr Hyun-Jung Lee’s presentation
The films from the projects can be seen online and by clicking on the picture below

Cross cultural management

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SarahSarah Paterson from the department of Law talked about her use of Moodle to develop students critical writing skills.

Moodle Wiki
Sarah used the Moodle Wiki to enable students to write collaboratively. This worked well although it took some time to check and edit student responses once they had completed their submissions.

Peer assessment using Moodle workshop tool
She used the workshop function on Moodle to get students to provide peer feedback on assessment. Each student was randomly allocated another students work and asked to mark it using the course assessment criteria.

Online feedback via the assessment tool

She also gave students the option of uploading writing exercises that they had done in class to a online assessment in order to receive feedback. The students really enjoyed being able to develop their writing skills in class but were reluctant to submit their assessments online. There was some discussion on how they could be encouraged to submit (by making the assessment anonymous for example).

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Dr Peter ManningDr Pete Manning from the department of Sociology shared his experiences of getting students to produce and curate material as part of their group presentations. Students used Prezi and Padlet to collect material on virtual pin-boards. The resources could then be used for exam revision and essay preparation. The students were asked to peer assess each presentation and were also asked to submit a self reflection on the exercise. The students enjoyed being given freedom to explore a subjects of their choice and it allowed them to share real world examples of concepts in a very theory heavy course. However the task did not count towards their final mark and did require extra work so ideally it would replace a summative task in the future.

Slides from Dr Pete Manning’s presentation

Torture-padlet-smallRight-to-vote-padlet-small

 

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CatherineDr Catherine Hua Xiang from the Language centre was awarded an LTI grant with kit to enable students studying Mandarin Chinese on LN808 and LN814 to work collaboratively to produce news reports on a global event or an interview on a current issue topic. The students were required to film themselves speaking Mandarin Chinese and then apply English subtitles to their finished project as part of their continuous course assessment. This project was very successful and the films can be used as a resource for future cohorts.

‘Although I spent a lot of time on the project, I really enjoyed it as we have real product and we have also been awarded a grade’

Slides from Dr Catherine Hua Xiang’s presentation

Video example:

CatherineXiangVideos

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SivaSiva Thambissetty from the department of Law gave students the option to submit a short video or series of images on Prezi or Slide share that explains an aspect of copyright infringement. Student feedback was generally positive with 60% recommending that the assignment continues next year.

 

Slides from Siva Thambissetty’s presentation

‘Quite refreshing after three years of essays!’

LL251-video-smallLL251-piktochart-small

 

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If you are interested in developing your own ‘students as producers’ project then you might want to apply for an LTI grant see our blog page for more details and contact us at LTI for some advice and to discuss your idea LTI.Support@lse.ac.uk

May 14th, 2015|Assessment, Events & Workshops (LTI), Images, Audio & Video, innovation, LTI Grants, Show and tell, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies|Comments Off on Show and tell on students creating and sharing content|

Students as producers show and tell event

SAPSThursday 30 April 12:00-13:45 NAB.2.14

On Thursday 30 April LTI will be holding a show and tell event on the students as producers projects that have recently been carried out at LSE, many as a result of the 2014 LTI grant process.  An outline of some of the projects can be viewed on our events page and you can reserve a place at the show and tell event via the online training system.

‘Students as producers’ describes activities which encourage students to create and share material, see Healey, M., Flint, A. and Harrington, K. (2014) Students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education. York: Higher Education Academy

The Learning Technology and Innovation Grants contain a strand for students as producers projects which are those that “encourage the production and sharing of student generated media content, encouraging students to work collaboratively and enhance their learning experience”. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lti/lti-grants/students-as-producers/

Applicants can apply for kits of equipment (DSLR’s, iPads and Podcasting) to give out to students to create content.

I first came across the concept in the NetworkED seminar by Helen Keegan on 05/11/14.  You can watch the recording of Helen’s talk on our Youtube channel.  Describing her ‘students as active collaborators’ rather than passive consumers, Helen gave a really inspiring talk detailing various projects which often involved students working collaboratively across various institutions and countries.

You might think that her field of ‘Interactive Media and Social Technologies’ lends itself to this type of teaching more easily than the social sciences. Yet here at LSE students as producers projects have successfully run in the fields of Sociology, Management, Law, Languages and International Relations.

If you are interested in applying for a LTI grant to try out some students as producers take a look at our blog page https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lti/lti-grants/students-as-producers/ and padlet for some ideas: http://padlet.com/lti_support/SAPs

Watch the recording of NetworkEDGE Professor Sonia Livingstone 25/02/15

Powerpoint slides from the presentation: Sonia Livingston @ NetworkEDGE – Slides

Tweet your questions and join the debate #lsenetEDGE

 

 

Neurodiversity and lecture capture – the student voice

Last November, Steve Bond and I released the findings of the Neurodiversity and Lecture Capture report, where we surveyed 124 LSE students at all levels to find out their experiences with lecture capture and lecture recordings. To get more insight into the issues raised in the survey, we decided to run focus groups in March with undergraduate and postgraduate students who identified themselves as neurodiverse. Four students participated; two postgraduate (Student A and Student B) and two undergraduate (Student C and Student D). Here’s what they had to say.

September 22nd, 2014|Images, Audio & Video, Teaching & Learning, Tools & Technologies|Comments Off on Neurodiversity and lecture capture – the student voice|

How do the new copyright exceptions affect you?

You may have heard in the news that new copyright exceptions came into force in the UK on the 1st June 2014. At LSE I have been trying to keep staff up to date with the changes and what they mean for teaching, learning and research and with this in mind I have drafted a set of guidelines. However, I thought I would take the opportunity to highlight a few of the new amendments – which are mainly changes to copyright exceptions, and what they mean in practice.

The changes around educational copying are probably of most interest to those of us in higher education. Section 32 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act had an outdated (some might say ludicrous) clause that permitted educational copying provided a ‘reprographic process’ was not used. This ruled out any form of photocopying or scanning for teaching and meant essentially you had to rely on your Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) Licence or write things out in long hand! The new exception means you can display material on interactive whiteboards (or on the VLE) provided you must include a sufficient acknowledgment – essentially it sanctions what a lot of teachers were probably doing already. However, this exception is subject to ‘fair dealing’ so you should stick to a small amount of the work and the material you use must be illustrative of a subject you are teaching. It certainly broadens the scope for including third party material in teaching (for example in PowerPoint or on Moodle) for illustrative purposes, but a teacher will need to judge what constitutes ‘fair’.

June 23rd, 2014|Announcements, copyright, Images, Audio & Video, Teaching & Learning|Comments Off on How do the new copyright exceptions affect you?|