Video Feedback er Video...

Short rough and ready screen capture that does the job of telling colleagues how I recently tried using video to give students faster and more effective feedback when used in conjunction with traditional feedback for some third year coursework. All rather low tech but seems to have been effective - formal feedback in due course. I trialled this on my third year Economics module, The Internet, Computers & Society (ITEC30011).

Please note the first video that I play hasn't been picked up by the screen capture software but the audio has - and the subsequent video clips are okay - both video and audio.

August 2009 Addendum: I've since had the formal feedback from this module and it has been very positive. Over 90% of the students on the module viewed the videos and 100% of those who viewed their personal feedback videos found them useful. Over 90% of students also viewed the generic feedback video and 90% of those reported finding it useful. Something else that emerged (via both formal and informal feedback) was that having a video seemed to encourage students to read through the written feedback on their actual physical submission (since they told me so). Furthermore every assignment was collected by students, whereas many assignments (with their feedback) are often left uncollected.

I've since been asked to talk to the NOW VLE team (NOW being the Virtual Learning Environment used by Nottingham Trent University) about my use of the VLE for hosting the videos so expect some further outputs in due course. It is certainly my intention to repeat this next year and to expand its use where practical. It does involve some more work on my part but seems to offer big benefits to the students. So I'm thinking about the best ways to incorporate the use of video feedback, so as to keep it manageable, and thus encourage colleagues to consider its use. I'll be posting some video "How To's" and tips in the near future.

The Importance of Choice

I attended a presentation on the new new (impending) VLE at NTU yesterday.

An issue I raised (as I have done elsewhere) is whether any policy descision has yet been made about staff who currently use external sites to provide those things that the current VLE (the VLP) doens't. For instance I have a couple of blogs (this being one of them but the more active one is one I use to support a third year module) and I also use Flickr (a litle bit) and YouTube for video hosting.

Now the new VLE will support some of thes features (and I'll use them for some modules) but I don't wan to be told that it was all very well being an innovator and early adoptor but everything must now come in-house once support for such features becomes available. For some things I want to keep them external, one very good reason being that people outside of NTU can access them, and I believe this contributes to the global profile of the university. And contributes to the gloabal pool of knowledge. NTU doeosn't lose out be some of my materials being externally available but it can gain. Thoughts from colleagues most welcome.

NTU New VLE

On a more positive note (after the last posting) I would add that today I went to a meeting of the NTU eLearning Consultative Group. Essentially this is the group who are tasked with selecting a new Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) for the Nottingham Trent University.

Now I’ll resist putting in any details since some things are sensitive and so confidential (+ Doh! Someone might read this blog!) but what I can say is that this is just one of several groups that I am involved in that goes to show what a great bunch of people are working at NTU.

There are some really resilient, creative and witty people to be found at NTU.

Of course a mixture of empirical observations and rumours suggest this is not the case everywhere within the university – just like any big organisation – with there being an uneven distribution of these talented, likeable, and dedicated types…

Make up the remainder of the posting yourself!