Lecture capture pilot project report

With the help of the Learning Development Centre and Information Services, the Education Support Team piloted a small-scale lecture capture project in the Spring term 2012. The project report is  available to read here, including case studies of use, analysis of staff and student evaluations, and usage statistics.

The lecture capture pilot reached approximately 1000 students on 19 modules in the Schools of Arts and Social Sciences, Informatics, Health Sciences and the Learning Development Centre in the Spring term 2012. There were 4,195 separate views of the recordings during this period, and usage reports show that the majority of use was around the exam revision period.

The student evaluation showed that 91% of students reported using the lecture capture recordings. The most popular uses of the recordings were for revision and to review areas that students did not understand the first time. 93% of students reported that the recordings helped their learning. A very small minority of students (3%) stated that they did not find the recordings necessary.

Lecture capture in Social Sciences: An interview with Dr Sophie Harman

Dr Sophie Harman is Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of International Politics at City University London. Towards the end of the last academic year, having heard about the School’s iTunes U project, she decided to start recording her lectures and hosting them online. Since then, the recordings have been some of the highest ranking downloads on our site. At the time, this involved recording, editing and syncing the video with the slides manually. Ahead of our lecture capture pilot, Sophie gave a short interview on her experience of recording the lectures and students’ reactions.

Why did you decide to have your lectures recorded?

I was approached by Mo and thought as Director of Undergraduate Studies I had a responsibility to set an example to the rest of the Department by trialing them first.

How did you decide which lectures to record?

I decided to begin with first year lectures because I thought they would be more flexible to new technology than some of the older years, the material in the lectures was introductory and thus more easy to understand in the recordings, and first year attendance tends to be quite good so I had less concerns about the impact of the recordings on bums on seats.

Did you have any concerns?

Yes – that lecture attendance would decrease; that the content of the lecture would not translate well in a recorded format – my lectures tend to be quite interactive with students which could appear quite disjointed when edited; that students would feel nervous asking me questions in the lecture or offering opinions when asked in case they thought they looked stupid.

How did you address these concerns?

I informed students that should attendance decline I would stop filming and remove the lectures from iTunes U; I agreed with Mo that I would review all of the lecture content to check for mistakes and flow of narrative before they were uploaded to iTunes – Mo was extremely helpful in doing this; I reassured students that they were not being filmed and any questions or comments they had would be edited out of the final recording.

Was there any effect on students’ attendance?

No.

How do you think your students used the recordings?

Revision, supplement to their lecture notes, clarification for students with English as their second language

Did you get a positive response from students when you suggested it?

Yes. They were quite impressed that we were doing this and that it would be free and easily accessible.

Will you continue to have lectures recorded?

Yes, it was nerve-wracking at first (I immediately assumed that once the camera was on I would forget how to lecture and start babbling gibberish) but Mo was very reassuring that I would have control over what content would be uploaded and after the first five minutes of the first lecture I forgot the camera was there. The students have been positive about it, and as long as it does not reduce student attendance I’m happy to continue with this. If student attendance drops then I’ll stop – I find it a useful supplement to lecture attendance, not a substitute, and I think most of the students recognize this too.

A Guide to Writing Feedback for Undergraduates: By Academics and Students

Top ten tips

I ran a session at the LDC conference last week called ‘an undergraduate guide to feedback’.  I showed a few of the different ways in which we deliver feedback to students in the School of  Social Sciences.  This included using Wiki’s for continuous feedback, using the quiz tool in moodle to deliver operational feedback to students, and paying PhD students to write a guide to feedback for undergraduates with the purpose of providing students with a clearer idea of what we expect them to do with their feedback, and PhD students a more comprehensive idea of the types of feedback they should be giving undergraduates when they are marking.

I then opened the topic up to the floor for debate, first we discussed the different types of feedback that others were using in their Schools, and this ranged from using video and audio to providing group feedback for assignments.

We also had some students in the audience so I asked them to think of the most useful and productive feedback they had received as students and they came up with the following list of feedback preferences:

• General points delivered to the entire class before they received their grade
• Feedback that is delivered electronically as they often have difficulties deciphering handwriting
• Lessons learned from previous years students
• The option to discuss feedback with a tutor or module leader specifically in the first year
• Voice recording (Audio Feedback)

We then moved the session on to try and write a series of tips for academic staff writing feedback for undergraduates.  The audience was made up of Academics, Support Staff and Students who all helped input into the following list of tips/ideas:

• Consider giving general feedback across the class before grades are released so students engage.
• Stay away from Jargon and ensure students understand the language you are using i.e. critical discussion
• Criteria specific – link your feedback to your assessment criteria
• Don’t hand write – consider electronic feedback (moodle?) or typed cover sheets, students have problems with handwriting.
• All feedback needs to be appropriate to the type of assessment – one size does not fit all!
• Suggest solutions, don’t just point out errors!
• Make sure you let the students know when you are giving feedback – flag it as feedback!
• Be creative consider audio, peer assessment and other innovative forms of  feedback.

iTunes U in Arts and Social Sciences

Last week I ran a workshop on iTunes U in the schools of Arts and Social Sciences at City. I wanted to give people an update on how far we have got with introducing podcasting in the Schools, as well as going over the basics of what iTunes U is and how to access the content we have on there. As it happened, every member of the audience owned an iPod, iPad or iPhone,which made my job a little easier.

This is the first year in which City has been recording lectures, seminars and conferences and hosting them on iTunes U. In Arts and Social Sciences, we’ve published guest lectures, research seminars and conferences in Cultural Policy and Management, Economics, International Politics, Music, Psychology, Publishing and Sociology.

Besides recording lectures – which can be a valuable tool to aid students’ revision, boost the research profile of the university, and expand the audience for our events – the big challenge for our iTunes U and podcasting project is to start creating more tailor-made content, which takes advantage of the podcast’s key characteristics – mobility, brevity and ‘linkability’. Research and best practice (references below)  into educational podcasting suggests a number of ways in which downloadable, subscribable audio/video files can help students, and we’re planning to get underway with some of these over the summer and in the coming year.

In particular, we’re hoping to interview academic staff in different departments about their careers, their research interests, and talk in detail about the issues that are central to the courses they teach on. We are also working on a series called ‘Introduction to…’ which discusses what a potential applicant should expect when they choose a subject to study at university. Further, we need to explore the more pedagogic applications of podcasting, such as creating revision presentations for students before exams, giving tasters or teasers ahead of new modules, and as a way of giving supplementary explanation of difficult concepts and topics beyond what can be given in lectures.

A number of questions were raised during the presentation, including the issue of how we can monitor usage and downloads from our iTunes U site. Now that we have these stats, we can use them to inform the content, format and pitch of our future material. Another question was around the ability to link to podcast episodes from and to iTunes. iTunes allows you to link directly to a podcast series, so you can email or tweet the URL of a podcast’s location in the iTunes store. Here’s a link to one of our most recently updated podcasts.

If you are a member of staff in Arts and Social Sciences at City University and you are interested in experimenting with podcasting, or if you already have some experience and want to get more involved, please contact Mo Pamplin or a member of the Education Support Team.

References

Cheetham, J., S. Ackerman and K. Christoph (2009). “Podcasting: a Stepping Stone to Pedagogical Innovation”. [Online] http://engage.doit.wisc.edu/edu_podcasting/. Accessed 18/05/11.

Division of Information Technology, University of Wisconsin (ND). “Teaching & Learning with Podcasting”.[Online] http://engage.wisc.edu/podcasting/teaching/index.html. Accessed 18/05/11.

Guertin, L. et al (2007). “Questioning the Student Use of and Desire for Lecture Podcasts”. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 3 (2), 2007. [Online] http://jolt.merlot.org/vol3no2/guertin.htm. Accessed 18/05/11.

A Case Study: Classroom Response Systems

Classroom Response Systems or PRS (Personal Response Systems) often known as clickers can be used in many different ways to support teaching and learning.  We currently have 300 TurningPoint handsets for use in the Schools of Arts and Social Sciences.

These handsets can be used in conjunction with PowerPoint  in order to quiz students  throughout a lecture.  In the case study video below Dr Kielan Yarrow discusses how he uses clickers to teach Psychology at City University London.

The PRS system is very simple to use, especially if you are familiar with PowerPoint.  If you are a member of staff at City University London and would like some training on how to use the handsets please contact a member of the Education Support Team.

Conference papers accepted for Europlat

Kate and I were pleased to learn today that we have had two papers accepted for the twelfth European Congress of Psychology convening in Istanbul in July this year. We attended the conference in 2010 and were impressed at the breadth of work being discussed.
The conference attracts delegates from across Europe and we will be speaking to the teaching and learning strand of the conference (Europlat). The papers that were accepted are

‘Using technology to innovate in Psychology Higher Education in a UK university: a case study’
This paper looks at the move from a traditional face to face approach to teaching to the use of a VLE (Moodle), virtual classrooms and online tools for assessment, grading and feedback. This move to a more blended approach has been prompted by the changing situation in UK higher education funding – with students needing to work part time in order to fund their education and consequently needing a more flexible approach to their learning. This paper addresses how City University London has approached this and some of the challenges we have faced.

The second paper is entitled ‘Student feedback and online marking in an undergraduate psychology program: a case study’  At City University London, we are gong to be taking a feed forward approach to feedback in the undergraduate psychology program. We will be working with the PhD students to produce a detailed guide for students.  This guide will be designed to help students understand what they are expected to do with their feedback, and how they can apply it to their next assignment.

We are looking forward to spending some time learning from our colleagues at this inspiring conference. We will, of course, blog whilst we are at the conference.