Investigating and Enabling Video Feedback at the University of Birmingham (515) Home : Annual Conference 2014

Investigating and Enabling Video Feedback at the University of Birmingham (515)

Public Group Active 8 years, 1 month ago

Mon, Sep 1 2014, 12:05pm – 1:05pm

Description

This presentation will explore the findings of a 2014 study at the University of Birmingham into the use of video feedback by faculty from a range of subjects. Video feedback is especially relevant in the context of two sector-wide trends: 1) the increasing use of online written feedback, and 2) students’ consistent dissatisfaction with feedback as expressed in the NSS. Video feedback is potentially a way to provide higher quality feedback to students, and may be more efficient than written feedback (Mathieson, 2012).

The University of Birmingham has recently launched a new Virtual Learning Environment, Instructure’s Canvas, and also a lecture/screen capture system, Panopto. These technologies, in combination with webcams and cheaply available graphics tablets such as the Wacom Bamboo, give faculty a platform for creating video feedback in a variety of formats.

Good practice in video feedback already exists in pockets across the University, but no attempt has been made to evaluate this, or to pull it together into a simple guide for colleagues. The purpose of this study is to identify the different formats of video feedback, identify the benefits and challenges to its use in Higher Education, and to define areas of good practice.

Specifically, the study also aimed to answer key questions around the efficiency of video feedback, whether it engenders student engagement, its role in relationship-building between faculty and student, issues around data protection, and whether video feedback changes the structure of feedback significantly compared to textual feedback.

A case study was conducted consisting of in-depth interviews with 6 academics (the users) and a questionnaire of around 500 students at both postgraduate and undergraduate level (the recipients) to understand their perception of video feedback as an educational tool for higher education.

At the time of writing the final findings have not been collated, but indications are that there are a wide range of applications of the technology including screen-captured feedback on formative essays, audio feedback directly into Canvas on summative work from large cohorts, and the use of graphic tablets to ‘sketch’ model answers whilst providing an audio commentary.

Earlier work by Millar (2006) indicated that audio feedback promotes dialogue between tutor and student, and this has been born out, with more examples of students discussing audio feedback with their lecturers than with text-based equivalents.

The project, funded by the University’s Centre for Learning and Development also included a second phase in which a support service will be launched to help staff get started with video feedback. This will take the form of a series of seminars, a web resource highlighting some of the best techniques, and a hands-on support service manned by the College of Social Sciences eLearning Team.

Mathisen, P. (2012 Video feedback in Higher Education – A contribution to Improving the Quality of Written Feedback. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy. Vol 7(2), 97 -116

Milla, J. (2006) ‘Understanding staff student interaction is central to engaging students with feedback’. Accessed 17th March, 2014.http://stadium.open.ac.uk/stadia/preview.php?s=39&whichevent=747