E-Learning Environments team blog

Over the last few weeks we have been surveying UCL’s E-learning Champions to find out what their priority interests were for the next year or so. We had a very high engagement, over 60 responses, which is encouraging in itself. We invited Champions to select from a mix of concepts, tools and practices . In the graph top scored priorities are given as percentages.

The highest interest was around the use of video e.g. lecture capture, ‘flipping’, developing short clips and demonstrations. This is perhaps not so surprising, in our discussions with departments and Champions, the issue of how we can use video more effectively has come up repeatedly and from all parts of UCL. There are probably quite a few reasons for this; YouTube, MOOCs and video-lecture portals like the Khan Academy  have shown how even fairly low-fi video can be used in learning. Moreover Lecturecast  has proved to be an extraordinarily popular technology at UCL with both students and staff. Although the use so far has been relatively conservative so far colleagues are bginning to experiement with EchoCapture ‘personal capture’, that is using screen recordings to create short narrated video clips and then using these to provide additional resources, preparation for labs, fieldwork and tutorials and even feedback on assessments. See the UCL Lecturecast wiki for more information.

I lead a video project called REC:all (recording and augmenting lectures for learning) which is looking at how we use lecture capture in educationally interesting ways. We are compiling a quick review of how video is being used to support students learning at UCL, in order to identify good examples. If you are currently using video  – including screen-capture, use of mobile devices, animation etc, even more use of Lecturecast such as ‘flipping’ – please let us know with a few details and we will follow up with you.

Perhaps unsurprisingly electronic forms of assessment and feedback were next and taken together the highest collective priority. UCL has seen very rapid growth in the use of Turnitin, diagnostic and formative Moodle quizzes and Moodle-based e-exams. Champions were very interested in using Grademark comments and rubrics and providing diagnostic feedback through Moodle quizzes and lessons.

ELE colleagues are currently redeveloping our support for Moodle quizzes and we are closely involved in an interesting new project looking at the value of early diagnostic quizzes in a range of SLMS Masters programmes. CALT has also developed some excellent online resources available form their Assessment and feedback page.

Third was collaborative and group work in and outside the classroom, including the use of blogs and wikis and classroom technologies such as clickers. At about the same level of interest was audio, for example to provide podcasts and audio feedback to students. Audio is rightly seen as ‘simpler’ to use than video and even Grademark has a basic audio feedback feature.

Despite the drawbacks (mainly low returns and possibly skewed responses) of using online methods such as Moodle or Opinio for getting programme feedback remain of much interest.

Online discussion (forums, instant messaging and the Blackboard virtual classroom) was almost as popular, as was the growing field of fully online learning for distance learning, short courses and CPD, another area ELE are developing new support resources for.  Classroom technologies such as clickers, but also maybe new ways of presenting, using tablets, online voting and so also rated highly.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this survey was actually how wide the Champions’ interests were, this provides some challenges if we want to provide support, but is very positive in that colleagues are willing to explore and experiment with a remarkable range of new ideas and technologies. In addition to the suggestions in the survey, coleagues expressed interest in for example iPads, virtual machines, cloud-based services and automated maths marking. We are now looking into ways of further supporting Champions in all these areas and welcome your ideas.

This is me, climbing a tree.

What are you looking at?

Earlier today I was reminded of a topic I’ve wanted to explore more ever since I worked with Carl Gombrich from UCL’s BASc Arts and Sciences programme. In conversation about his flipped classroom model he mentioned, in passing, that people ‘can close the talking head’ and watch the other video feed, make notes, browse the web or simply walk around and listen. This instantly raised several questions:

• What’s the value of the talking head?
• Why do they close the talking head?
• Is there something happening here we have not explored enough?
• Why did Matt put his picture on this blog post?

I was reminded of this today, in a meeting with an external group I noticed most of the people around the room starred into the conference phone. Most did it when they were talking, others for listening – those who looked to be thinking of complex mathematical formulas and the science of life (or lunch) gave a mixed set of data. Without any research backing whatsoever (hold tight), Carl is right. When watching a recorded lecture, people can close that talking head at their discretion. For lecture capture we’re talking about a camera fixed to the back of the room, a pixellated academic  who goes in and out of shot but does have their best tie on. The other thing to consider is that  focusing on the captured display device might be a preference anyway – as it’s showing the projected content but this is a bigger video, centered to the screen – it’s more dominant.

So what is the value of the talking head?

Value (y) of talking head over time (x)

As indicated by my very technical graph made from assumptions alone (yikes) I’d expect to see it starts really high, peaks around a muddy spot, point of clarification or unexpected event and then finally towards the end. Otherwise I’d expect it drops to very low levels the rest of the time. What does this head add? Perhaps initially we want to see who’s talking to us, but I’d expect most people may know the speaker and instead want to know other questions. Previously these have ranged from:

• When studying from non-class/campus locations I like to see who’s talking to me
• I’m a social being, I like to see others
• Checking the speaker isn’t doing it in their pants from home
• And so on.

I am sure there’s better reasons, but ultimately we’re generally a social animal and perhaps it’s as simple as ‘I like to see them, at least for a bit’.

Why do people close the talking head?

Perhaps once we’ve confirmed how nice their office / home is and checked weather they are indeed wearing clothes we’re less attracted by this face and we close it off. A real study here would be fascinating. Imaging the same recording to thousands of people and all your measuring is when the talking head is closed/opened. With large classes or a MOOC this is easy or longitudinally over the same service and many, many different videos and viewers  (i.e. Lecturecast) it’s also easy and the data should show measurable results.

Is there something happening here we have not explored enough?

I think so. If anyone out there has done more on this it would be interesting to see it. There’s something in here about clearly highlighting the level of human to human face-exposure. It’s higher than zero but I’d expect lower than 100%. But where does it sit? If anyone’s got more research/data do let me know. For distance learning or massive online courses, I think this information could be very interesting.

What did you look at at the beginning of the post?

Answers below please

A very interesting Echo360 ‘community conference’ was held at UCL yesterday. There was a strong UCL presence  including ViTAL webinar star Carl Gombrich, talking about flipping.

Echo360 outlined their technical roadmap, including better editing and social learning features, quizzes and so on. All very exciting but some saw a potential overlap/confusion with the VLE.

I also did a presentation on behalf of the ViTAL/REC:all projects reviewing how our pedagogical ideas of using video had developed over the years and gave a snapshot of how far we had got with the REC:all project.

The slides are below.

Interesting new webinar and report of an Echo 360 project ME2U by John Davies and Clare Hardman of the Teaching and Learning Development Unit at the University of Sussex. Echo 360 personal capture allows lecturers to record ‘ screencasts’, audio and video of desktops on their own computer. It is easy to set up and learn and can be easily integrated into Moodle. There is simple review and editing, but the tool is quite simple. The project looked at how such screencasts (maximum 10 minutes) could supplement ‘conventional’ teaching such as lectures and labs and found a number of uses:

• Contextualisation – helped prepare course and practical/lab work, and so saved time in the face-to-face session and can often be used for several years. Although the content was available in handbooks, students liked to be orientated via the ‘narrative’ alternative. 70% of users felt better prepared.
• Assessment preparation – enabled a more personalised introduction to tasks; these proved to be very popular, especially with first-year students.
• Feedback  – allowed cohort-level feedback. Students found this more ‘personal’ and reassuring, and staff found it saved staff time in answering generic feedback questions by email.

The project undertook comparative studies and found (tentatively) that viewing the contextualisation screencasts produced a significant distance in marks, something like 5% improvement.

Most staff participants said they would use screencasts again and would recommend the approach to colleagues. They liked the quick non-technical nature of the system allowing ‘on-the-fly’ screencasts  from home or the office. Although some staff felt self-conscious at first, students actually preferred the informality of the quick unedited ‘rough and ready’ production values, perceiving them as more responsive and ‘personal’. As expectations adjusted to this staff found they could spent less and less time on production and focus more on speed of response and content.  The project found it useful to show lecturers examples of this approach, supplemented by appreciative quotes from student focus groups and access logs showing use.

The conclusion was that the screencast approach was time-efficient and maybe time saving, but that the big gain was in enabling richer student preparation and feedback.

Dr Bob van den Brand from Tilburg University in the Netherlands yesterday presented a fascinating webinar on “Improving student outcomes with lecture technology”. He uses the Mediasite system to capture his accountancy lectures and had devised a simple pedagogical wrapper which adds value to the recorded material, a framework he calls ‘i-Star learning’. He believes that lectures have an important  role in conveying passion and drama about the subject, but also that is easy to add more educational value.

So, in addition to the ‘normal’ captured lecture, Dr van den Brand creates short (10-15’) video ‘snippets’ to explain concepts that he knows the students  find difficulty with. These are short YouTube-like presentations. Snippets can be filmed in a studio, and Dr van den Brand likes to make them fun and engaging, but I thought a similar outcome could also be created via desktop capture from a PowerPoint or tablet – for drawing diagrams and equations . Students can pick and choose snippets depending on their knowledge and interest.

To reinforce the content, short quizzes are added, using the institutional VLE. These short tests provide immediate feedback (either text or video) but can also be used to keep record students’ marks and progress.

To clear up any remaining difficulties, students can ask questions. This can also be done online using a virtual classroom such as our own Blackboard Collaborate.

The final aspect of the i-Star framework, though not specifically part of the lecture capture package  is to provide immediate results to students following exams, again with an opportunity to ask follow-up questions.

Dr van den Brand considered there was a marked increase both in student satisfaction “students will be happy” but also performance; he reported a 20% increase in marks in one accountancy module.  He stressed that this did not involve a huge investment in time; “Start with the three most difficult issues in your module and make a little block, it takes 2-3 hours and the students will love you for it”.

The webinar, Improving Student Outcomes With Lecture Capture Technology, is now available for on-demand viewing.

I attended (is that the right word?) and interesting webinar this week entitled “Harrowing tales of lecture capture – why blended learning scares instructors“. Sponsored by Echo360 it featured input and discussion from three US university lecture capture veterans.

LC was recognised as “one of the hottest technologies on campus today” and a response to ‘big picture drivers’; proving educational value, improving retention / graduation rates, global competition and economic ‘headwinds’.  The moderator, consultant Alan Greenberg, also described the ‘perfect storm’ of rapid advances in LC systems, tech-savvy students and increasing demand which has not only effected LC’s “phenomenal” adoption rate but growth of other classroom technologies such as smart boards, video broadcasting/conferencing and clickers. Much of the push comes from students

We were offered a definition of LC as a “solution that captures and records classroom-based (or instructor and user-generated) activities in rich media, digital format (video, audio, PowerPoint, multimedia) and making this material available for immediate or later on demand review over the Internet”, but it was recognised that even this was dated as new systems allow bookmarking, note making and sharing.

The three academics then described how they were using LC.

• Jimmy Rogers (The University of Texas) said it had allowed him to rethink how he taught chemistry, allowing more of a focus on problem solving. He didn’t use PowerPoint at all to avoid the “risk of reading” but partially completed templates he completed by hand in the lecture using the visualiser (see image above). The students loved it and of course used the recordings to replay his solutions.
• Lisa Abdallah (University of Massachusetts) was running a project to look at posting pre-captured material (using the Echo360 personal capture tool) to see if she could do more active learning and group work in her Nursing classes  - a LC-driven pedagogy known in the US as ‘flipping’. 84% of her students agreed that LC helped them learn the course material. If she had to miss a class she would prerecord it for her students so as not to miss the continuity.
• Jared Danielson (Iowa State University) thought LC allowed the teacher to move ‘faster’ than normal through the material. His students noted down ‘review points’ in the live lecture to reply online and consider in more detail later.

The panel then considered the sometimes negative perceptions of other teaching staff and concluded;

• There was no noticeable effect on attendance at live events – students were sophisticated to understand the difference and advantages of both. Many still use compulsory attendance, though.
• It was tough to see yourself recorded, but only at first, but remember your students are already familiar with your style and mannerisms, even if you aren’t!
• Off the cuff remarks were not a problem, they could be edited out and students were generally respectful of the protected context (though some universities had copyright notices on their recorded material).
• The technology would never put people out of a job – up-to-date lectures should only have a lifetime of a year or two.
• LC can be used to improve your own teaching

And the pitfalls? There were a few ‘adjustments’ lecturers had to make; move around less, repeat student questions, be careful of confidential information, don’t use the laser pointer.

The conclusion, maybe not surprisingly, was that there were few ‘harrowing tales’ and LC was not ‘scary’ at all. The recording his here, the slides can be found here and the moderator mentioned  a 2009 white paper he had written, The New Imperative for Lecture Capture Systems in Higher Education.