Portsmouth Business School eLearning Team PBS Learning News Achieving the right blend! Did Video Kill the Radio Star? In the age of YouTube, MySpace, Bebo,

Portsmouth Business School eLearning Team

PBS Learning NewsAchieving the right blend!

Did Video Kill the Radio Star?In the age of YouTube, MySpace, Bebo, and Facebook, it is common for many young people to learn about what it is ‘happening’ by browsing the many video snippets that have been posted online by their peers. These videos are powerful not because they are of good quality, but because they have a message that is interesting to the viewer, and they are easily added/accessed via the video content management systems provided online.

University students not only post details of their social lives on the internet, but record their university experiences – and can capture the flavour of what it is like to study somewhere in a video clip that lasts no more than two or three minutes. This visual transmission of information is powerful if kept short and punchy.

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eLearning Centre Summer Workshops

Where can I find information about eLearning?

http://www.elearning.port.ac.uk/workshops

Email the eTeam! [email protected]@[email protected]

Issue 3 – Summer 2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKjWqf9UEIw&feature=related

So we can say for sure that students are very receptive to short messages delivered visually, but this does not mean that any old video will enhance the learning experience. It is quite easy to make bad video that lacks contrast, has a poor quality sound track, and goes on for too long. Watching a talking head for more than 15 minutes becomes boring! So a longer video needs to be broken up into segments having different themes to be powerful. This can be arranged at the planning stage, or by shooting multiple short videos made accessible through a table of contents, the whole thing published as one video on DVD or streamed from our streaming servers. In later pages, you can read how two colleagues have made use of video to deliver information to students.

However, audio recordings can be just as relevant and interesting if the speaker is able to provide pedagogically rich alternative views of a complex subject. Podcasts are quick and easy to make and stream. For long or short messages, video can’t kill the radio star yet!

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Blended Learning News

David Starkey: PBS eLearning CoordinatorOne of the powerful things about Victory is that it links to the student records system and makes it possible for academics to communicate with students via email. Without a username and password, the public can’t access Victory course materials online. In contrast, universities like Stanford publish some learning materials on iTunes. ‘Stanford to go’ is an easy to access means of distance learning, which offers video and podcast content management, delivered via the very professional iTunes platform.

Distributing Learning Objects via an ‘iTunes University’

The ‘METAL’ Project (continued)They are then shown that the most efficient way to analyse these problems is with basic mathematics. The mathematical solutions are presented electronically in a way that enables students to see each step that builds to form the answer. At the end of the animation there is a summary and conclusion. All the films were carefully scripted and then filmed and edited. The mathematical animations were checked and re-edited. The films were also reviewed by lecturers and students, until the video units were completed in early 2008.

The Student Experience

The project will add substantially to the student experience on maths for economics courses. There is a widely recognised problem that students fail to see the relevance of mathematics to the study of economics. This film series has directly addressed that issue so that each concept they tackle has a real life example showing the value of mathematics to the real world of economics.

The Teaching Experience

The resource is designed to assist teachers. The films liven the presentation of mathematical concepts. They are very flexible in use. The films can be shown in the class, but they can also be used as a starting point for further exploration. For example, the teacher can then use worked examples from a question data bank to strengthen student understanding.

Conclusion

Used appropriately these films can strengthen understanding of students, assist teachers in presenting material, improve attendance and help to improve exam performance.

Project personnel

Films were produced in collaboration with Streamlearn. Particularly pleasing was that excellent work was done by students, some of them from the Erasmus Programme, showing the wider benefits gained from such exchange relationships. Involved with the project were William Garrison (Producer), Ken Heather (Writer/Presenter), Alex Sellner (Animations Designer/Producer), Priska Lengauer (Animations Designer) Ina Schauermann (Mathematical Consultant), Milena Malnowska (East European Filming Consultant), Heike Bosserhoff (Western European Filming Coordinator), and Aurelia Kulawiak (Central European Filming Coordinator).

New Media in Teaching – Using it Effectively (continued)

In fact, the Stanford iTunes project includes this public site, and an access-restricted site for the Stanford community which includes coursework-linked iTunes sites for course-based materials. I would be interested to hear from any academic colleagues who have a view on whether PBS would benefit from making video & audio podcasts (on suitable topics) available via an iTunes site that we might call ‘PBS Direct.’

http://itunes.stanford.edu/index.html

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Blogging Inside & Outside Victory

Fostering Discussion & Opinion OnlineNew Media in Teaching – Using it Effectively

The ‘METAL’ Project: A Review

Introduction

METAL (Mathematics for Economics: enhancing Teaching And Learning) provides lecturers and students with a selection of free learning resources designed to engage Level 1 students more fully and enthusiastically in mathematics for economics.METAL was made possible through a HEFCE funded FDTL5 project, and is due to officially launch in early 2008. It has been enhanced by the involvement of many dozens of UK economics academics and students, and by exposure and demonstration at regional project workshops and other events around the UK.

Project aim and outcomes

The aim of the project was to maximise student attendance, engagement and participation in mathematics for economics through the provision of an accessible and fully interactive toolkit. Resources produced included an online question bank of mathematics teaching & assessment materials specifically applied to the field of economics; five interactive video units (covering 10 study units) using streaming video and animation to relate mathematical concepts to the field of economics; ten teaching and learning guides that provide an extensive bank of teaching activities (for large and small groups) covering all aspects of Level 1 Mathematics for Economics; economics case studies which place mathematical problems into a real world context; an interactive website to present the teaching & learning resources, to facilitate distance learning, fostering students' autonomy & ownership of the learning process.

Project development

The University of Portsmouth’s responsibility was for the video units. They each provide real world examples illustrating principles of economics; presentation of data derived from real world examples; formulas applied to the data to answer questions raised in the introduction; studio-based presentations where mathematical concepts are developed by an on-camera presented and illustrated with simple animations; and interactive questions from the question bank adapted to relate to these real-world issues. In total there are about 50 short films that illustrate all the major topics covered in a typical level one course. They cover five different learning outcomes: mathematical review; linear equations; mathematics of finance and growth; linear programming; differential equations. A real world scenario is presented, drawn from an industry or macroeconomic problem, for example. These are filmed in many different locations across Europe and the USA. This often involves interviews with managers or academics so that students are presented with real problems.

Ken Heather

Rachel Short: PBS Online Course DeveloperThe term ‘blog’ was coined in 1997 to describe a web log. It is basically a website, with entries specific to a topic, which are generally listed in reverse chronological order. They can be personal or corporate and a typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs. Most blogs will allow you to leave comments in a particular format. In 2007, the blog search engine Technorati tracked in excess of 100 million blogs using Google PageRank™.

Victory has a facility for creating a class blog within the discussion section of each site [ref. page 54 of the Designer Manual]. This additional feature will allow you to create a blog topic that both students and tutors can post to, thereby collaborating viewpoints in one area and it is hoped that this will provide a more comprehensive overview from the different individual perspectives.

The UoP blog entries can be viewed at: http://www.port.ac.uk/library/blogs/

Edublogs are specific to education and they are ideal for developing e-portfolios, collaborative group work, online journals, discussion boards and problem-based learning. This hosting tool supports hundreds of thousands of blogs for anyone with an interest in this field. The company Edublogs has been built using WordPress technology and updates directly from this hosting tool.

The largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world is considered to be ‘WordPress’, which is an open-source project with people from many different countries developing the content. It began in 2003 and has grown to support in excess of 10 million hits per day. WordPress was designed due to demand for a publishing system that was built on PHP and MySQL.

Edublogs provides an additional level of interactivity so that users are able to create meaningful multi-layered websites. In comparison, Blogger began as a small outfit and was bought by Google in 2003. It supports in excess of 1 million users with free and easy to use software, improving the mechanism for publishing online.

Videography: Plan, Prepare, Package, Produce & Publish!

‘Screencasting’ using Camtasia Studio

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What is Camtasia?

Pros & Cons of Using Video in Teaching

I have worked with Roger Welch and we have frequently videoed a question and answer session in which only the questions are scripted. Not only can you target areas found tricky, but you can also make short revision clips in this way. My course feedback indicates this is the student’s favourite use of video which last no more than 5 – 10 minutes. You can cover the whole syllabus and create a bank of short clips, but only show those videos which are appropriate for this year’s revision.

The disadvantage to this method is that you need to hold in your mind all the issues you wish to explain in answer to each question. With formal videoed lectures it is much better to use an autocue and read the material you have prepared in advance. However the autocue can result in a less interesting delivery. I now appreciate how skilled the television newsreaders are since they give the impression of having a personal conversation with the viewer. Feedback from students this year indicated that they much preferred the live lecture to the videoed version partly because of the pauses, asides and digressions you cannot help making when thinking on your feet.

The obvious advantage to the videoed lecture is that it can be viewed as many times as the student desires and they can just rewind to the area they find difficult. The obvious disadvantage, with law especially, is that they go out of date.

I heard a conference paper at this year’s Association of Law Teachers’ conference, in which the speaker had recorded his lectures as he gave them live, using Camtasia. This has the advantage of being more interesting, saving the time of writing out your lectures in full for the autocue, and being easy to update.

Another advantage of the videoed lecture is the freedom it gives you to use your contact time with students in a more creative way.

Video in Teaching: A Practitioner’s Experience

Camtasia Studio can capture anything you can display on your computer monitor. Capture images, text, video (with its associated audio), PowerPoint, voice recordings or discreet audio – you name it! It can also include previous captures into a composite file with new recordings. You then ‘produce’ the video into a number of output formats: WMV, Flash, AVI, Quicktime, iPhone…

Caroline Strevens: Head of Department, School of Law

I teach Criminal Law to first year Law undergraduates. I have used WebCT and Victory and its various facilities, including long and short videos, to improve student learning. The students enjoy this subject but find it difficult.

One of the advantages of using video is that you can identify the areas which the students find difficult and spend time in the video dealing with those issues.

It doesn’t stop there! You can drag finished videos into Camtasia Theatre, and build a dynamic table of contents like the one in the Flash video below, which is advertising the new Mini. It has on screen call outs and hotspots to bring up labels and explanations. Click a menu item to run a video on that topic. With this kind of thing embedded into Victory pages, even Victory can be cool! If you’d like to try using Camtasia to record a lecture or video series, email me: [email protected].

http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp