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Transcript forIncreasing Engagement with Pre-Lecture Screencasts with Paul Smith
“I'm Paul Smith. I teach in the division of Chemistry and Environmental Science. I'm a Senior Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry.
Essentially what a screencast is is a capture of the activity of what is going on your computer screen whilst you are able to give an audio commentary about what is going on and what you are doing on the computer screen. So, it is a versatile tool.You could be using any number of different programmes and it allows you to provide a narration over the top to explain what you are doing. What I have been trying to do is essentially use them as a tool to promote pre-lecture engagement. It is part of something called the flipped teaching model where what you try and aim to do is to create an environment in which the teaching contact time is flipped, so it becomes more learner-centred rather than teacher-centred. The problem is that lectures can occasionally become just a process of transmission of information so I have been using the screencasts to try and get some of the information to the students upfront, before the lectures. This then allows them to engage more in problem solving and question exercises and it allows them to come the lecture primed, prepared so that they can then start to look at problems and we can start to look at higher order cognitive skills rather than the lecture just being purely about transmission of information. The screencasts have been a very valuable tool in initiating that pre-lecture engagement.
What I have been trying to do is provide a brief summary of some of the key points that are going to be in the lecture. I try to keep them relatively short-ish. Mine have been something in the region of 15-20 minutes.
The students have been using them before but they have also found them extremely valuable to visit afterwards, particularly for revision purposes. We have a mid-term test and the students found them very useful for preparing for that. The students have said that they use them for exams. I have been looking on Moodle and some of the videos have been getting hits of around 150 prior to the recent exams, which took place last month. So, they do see them as tool for engaging throughout the year but they do also like to revisit them for revision purposes. Those are very, very popular. And the idea of having a pre-lecture screencast is that is allows you to try and integrate what is happening the VLE into your weekly classes, so it creates a routine of visiting the screencast so you've engaged with the VLE before the lecture each week rather than the VLE just being this depository of a large amount of information that students don’t really look at that much until the end of the year when they are going to revise. It kind of helps to bring together the E-resources and the face-to-face teaching.
I have found that it has helped in terms of increasing the amount of audience participation in lectures. Students have been, whose who have been using them, have been much more willing to participate and provide answers to questions. I found that the overwhelming feedback I have got from students is very positive. There has only been very few students in the feedback that I have got who are fairly ambivalent to it. But the vast majority of students have found it extremely useful.
A lot of the teaching still done face-to-face, involves a teacher explaining to a group of students in a class and very little of that material is actually recorded. Students may only get that one chance to hear you explain it so by recording the voice combining it with the visuals on the screencasts, it is a relatively easy way of capturing that and providing it as a resource for the students to revisit. So I think they do value that opportunity of listening to the tutor explain the theory again.”