Video in Teaching And Learning Special Interest Group (ViTAL SIG) Update

The Video in Teaching And Learning Special Interest Group (ViTAL SIG) was formed in February 2010 and to date has a membership of over 350 individuals from a wide variety of educational institutions and subject disciplines. Although the membership mainly comprises institutions from the UK, there is increasing representation from across Europe and further afield, partly through our links with the European project REC:all (recording and augmenting lectures for learning) which makes the group a truly diverse and international community of educational practitioners.

The remit of the group has evolved since its inception to take account of the continually developing and dynamic landscape, which is ‘video in education’ and in particular HE.

The initial remit of the group was to identify and share current information and guidance on

• Institution wide best practice for the management of digital resources, and the integration with external electronic repositories,
• Sound pedagogical principles in designing video materials for educational purposes,
• Guidance on issues concerning copyright and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).
• Practical guidance on addressing accessibility criteria with reference to current legislation in addition to usability criteria.

The Ning community is the main mechanism for communicating and publicising the various activities of the group, membership is open to anyone working within education.

ViTAL Webinars

A series of webinars was established at the beginning of 2011 and so far the group have delivered a total of 10 webinars, covering a diverse range of topics from IT infrastructure requirements in support of lecture capture, IPR and copyright considerations to pedagogy and new models for supporting teaching and learning. Previous recorded sessions can be viewed by visiting the ViTAL Ning community URL as mentioned above.

The following is a sample of some of the topics presented as part of the ViTAL webinar series;

• 5 Steps to Successful Flipping  (Apr 2012)
• Lecture Capture Pedagogy (Jan 2012)
• Legal issues surrounding lecture capture (May 2011)
• Video and pedagogy – what questions should we be asking now? (Mar 2011)
• Panopto at Imperial College London (Feb 2011)
• Lecturecast – UCL’s experience of a large Echo360 roll-out (Feb 2011)

With the rapid development in technology in terms of capabilities, video can no longer be consider solely in terms of a tool to support traditional teaching practice but rather as an agent of change used to inform how teaching and learning can be more effective and delivered more appropriately by contributing to student engagement and hence link more directly to the desired learning outcomes.  With all disruptive technologies there are barriers to overcome and here the ViTAL SIG presents and discusses these various ideas, concepts and challenges by means of the Ning discussion forum linked to the webinars.

So what about the future? The ViTAL steering group plan to continue supporting the regular webinars and to encourage further active participation of its membership to these popular webinars.

The steering group would like the ViTAL SIG group to develop into a self-sustaining group where the members propose topics for future webinars through the discussion forums and to foster a truly democratic group of educational practitioners.

Further information on the ViTAL SIG can be obtained by either visiting the Ning community  or by contacting any of the following;

ViTAL SIG Steering Group:
Dr Clive P L Young, University College London – c.p.l.young@ucl.ac.uk
John Conway, Imperial College London – j.conway@imperial.ac.uk
Philip Tubman, Lancaster University – p.tubman@lancaster.ac.uk

If you enjoyed reading this article we invite you to join the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) as an individual member, and to encourage your own organisation to join ALT as an organisational or sponsoring member