UCL lecturers on video

Once confined to a few teaching enthusiasts and specific disciplines, over the last decade video, audio and interactive media have become an increasingly mainstream part of UCL’s academic repertoire.

Media has definitely become part of many of our students’ study processes.

Students consistently report that video content assists their learning, either as a revision tool or as a new way of engaging with material. Student demand for example has largely driven the growth of lecture capture. More broadly the success of Khan Academy video-based MOOCs and especially at UCL Lynda.com has helped digital video become recognised as a means to support high-quality academic learning. Key to this is integration with Moodle enabling any media to be enhanced by other online resources and support.

Media itself has become easier and cheaper to produce, edit, store and deliver, enabling both our academics and students to become producers with ‘media literacy’ is widely becoming identified as a valuable education and research asset.

Tony Slade and Clive Young from the ISD Learning, Teaching & Media Services team have been working on a project this year to develop a UCL Educational Media service. The research project investigates how and why lecturers use video and what their future video requirements are for successful student teaching. Interviews have been compiled with staff project examples to form case studies. An education producer, Mike Howarth was commissioned to produce the content for the research project

The team has have found widespread use of media to change the way we design programmes. Media seems to act as a catalyst enabling new blends of virtual learning and conventional delivery to create rich media and face-to-face learning experiences. ‘Flipping’ is also increasingly considered at UCL as a way to maximise the educational opportunity of face-to-face learning.

For examples of these ideas, follow the links below to six short video case studies on UCL’s T&L Portal.

• Dr Graham Roberts (UCL Computer Science) explains how creates his own videos “to capture core materials” and to build a library of reusable and accessible resources for his students (and himself).
• Professor Andrea Sella (UCL Chemistry) discusses the various ways in which creating his own teaching videos help him to “shake things up and make things different”
• Dr Andrew Cook (UCL Institute of Cardiovascular Science) discusses the way he uses video to ‘tell the story’ of heart morphology with video equipment and his technique which may have application in your area of teaching
• Dr Ema Muk-Pavic (UCL Mechanical Engineering) shares how using videos as a form of assessment has proved beneficial, time-saving and useful for both students and staff
• Matthew Wood-Hill (UCL Bartlett Development Planning Unit) describes how videos are being used to connect research and teaching as well as to take students “beyond just the books”
• Dr John Potter (UCL Institute of Education) talks about the value of learners being creators of media as well as consumers as it helps “bring subject matter alive and increases engagement”

As a bonus if you are asking yourself “Can using free online video tutorials through lynda.com enhance my teaching?” try this additional case study.

• Lasse Johansson (Course Tutor, Open City Docs School within UCL Anthropology) confirms the answer is “definitely”