Screencasting and the Flipped Classroom in Speech and Language Therapy

Dr Holly Robson (Clinical Language Sciences) writes:

 

As a Speech and Language Therapist teaching Speech and Language Therapy Students, I am particularly invested in developing highly knowledgeable and competent clinicians in order to best serve our profession and clients. A good clinician has a strong grasp of theory and can apply it flexibly to clinical scenarios.  I am often concerned that theoretical and clinical aspects of training are separated and students struggle to transfer their knowledge from the classroom to the clinic.  I had previously discussed this translational challenge with one of our final year masters students, who told me that case studies and incremental clinical decision making in a peer learning environment supported her practice. I wanted to make these translational exercises the focus of my teaching.  But the problem was time.  The students already have a packed curriculum with an intensive teaching and clinical schedule.  I needed to find a way to embed more clinical thinking within teaching time, while retaining the taught theoretical content.  So I tried to flip my classroom.

 

As a new lecturer I was enrolled on the University of Reading Academic Practice Programme (APP), which exposes lecturers and teaching fellows to theoretical and practical aspects of teaching in higher education.  A particularly helpful presentation was given by Dr. David Nutt representing the GRASS project.  David described using screen capture to produce screencasts of lectures and delivering these lectures online via YouTube.  This struck me as a useful way to deliver taught content, providing students with materials to support their independent study, and freeing up teaching sessions for deep learning and applied clinical decision making exercises. I borrowed a GRASS laptop and microphone and David provided me with enough training to get started.  It took days! I did not have fun listening to my own lecture delivery and was somewhat overly officious in editing out my “erms”.  Then I had to create the new teaching session content.  I developed team based learning quizzes, case studies and practical sessions.  The students worked in teams and scored points from quizzes and peer feedback over the weeks.  There was a prize giving for the highest scoring teams at the end of the lecture series.

 

Feedback from the students was mostly positive.  Almost everyone wanted to keep the flipped classroom format and everyone had fun with the team based learning quizzes.  I probably pushed everyone, including myself, a bit too hard at some points, being unrealistic about how many other exercises we could do in the time frame.  Overall, flipping my classroom was a great experience.  The teaching sessions were much more fun and gave me the opportunity to interact more with my fantastic students.  I was honoured to be recognised by the RUSU Technological Innovation in Teaching Excellence Award and it is very motivating to know that efforts to improve my teaching have had a positive impact. It was hard work though, really hard. Will it be easier next year? Hmm may be…

More GRASS success!!!

A couple of weeks ago I presented a paper on screen capture, Technology Enhanced Learning and the Teaching Excellence Framework at the British International Studies Association (BISA) annual conference. I called this one ‘TEL: TEF’s Flexible Friend-How digital technology can support high level metric performance in the TEF.’

The 7 hour train journey from Hampshire to Edinburgh and back starting at 5.30 am each day was worth it!

The panel was well attended and the other papers presented in T&L group sessions were great including one on the use of Twitter in lectures by fellow Reading lecturer Mark Shanahan.

The HEA and BISA also, very kindly, awarded me their annual national prize for excellence in teaching. The panel awarded this in part because of my work with screen capture and also for the work I have done disseminating good practice across the HE sector.

So more GRASS success just ahead of project end!!

 

BISA prize

 

Classic students get dynamic video feedback for modelling projects – Explore an ancient temple yourself!

click feedback

Recently at the GRASS Summer Conference, Matthew Nicholls shared his experience of giving Quicktime screencapture feedback for students . Students see their model along with layers of close observational feedback that take them through the physical representation they have built. Please click on the link below to see this method of active and highly demonstrable feedback.

Click to Download

Sample feedback.mov
52.4 MB

 

LAST CALL for GRASS Summer Conference

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GRASS Screen Capture Summer Conference, 6th June,

11:00 am – 3:00 pm,
Meadow Suite, Whiteknights Campus

The GRASS Summer conference will showcase and celebrate the innovative use of screencapture throughout the University. The conference is an opportunity to learn from best practice and learning provision in a range of schools. We will consider some of the challenges facing colleagues engaged with technology enhanced learning and how these might be addressed.

The event will be fully interdisciplinary with case study presentations delivered by colleagues from a diverse range of disciplines across the university. The event is designed to support those who are just starting to use screencapture and to encourage more experienced colleagues who would like to develop and improve their use of this technology.

Speakers include: Lucinda Becker, Emma Mayhew and David Nutt – The GRASS Team,
Jane Setter – English Language and Linguistics
Patrick Lewis – Pharmacy
Nicola Abram – English Literature
Tim Lees – Built Environment
Robin Godfrey – Business Engagement and Transformation
Matthew Nicholls – Classics
Michelle Reid and Kim Shahabudin – Study Advice

We hope you will take time at the end of the academic year to celebrate the project and see how you can benefit directly from screencapture. If you would like to attend please email:

Julie van Vuuren , j.a.vanvuuren@reading.ac.uk you will then be sent full joining instructions.

Lunch and refreshments will be provided and, of course, we will be offering a range of homemade cakes!!!
Please our blog page https://blogs.reading.ac.uk/grass/ or click on this link to view this very short explanatory screencast http://www.screencast.com/t/HAjtfUoxO8jg. This session aligns with A1-A4 and K2-K4 3 of the UKPSF.

GRASS Screen Capture Summer Conference, 6th June, 11:00 am – 3:00 pm, Meadow Suite

summer-sweet-grass_product-shotThe GRASS Summer conference will showcase and celebrate the innovative use of screencapture throughout the University. The conference is an opportunity to learn from best practice and learning provision in a range of schools. We will consider some of the challenges facing colleagues engaged with technology enhanced learning and how these might be addressed.

The event will be fully interdisciplinary with case study presentations delivered by colleagues from a diverse range of disciplines across the university. Participants will be able to engage in streamed break-out sessions designed to support those who are just starting to use screencapture and to support more experienced colleagues who would like to develop and improve use of this technology.

Speakers include: Lucinda Becker, Emma Mayhew and David Nutt – The GRASS Team
Jane Setter – English Language and Linguistics
Patrick Lewis – Pharmacy
Nicola Abram – English Literature
Tim Lees – Built Environment
Robin Godfrey – Business Engagement and Transformation
Matthew Nicholls – Classics

We hope you will take time at the end of the academic year to celebrate the project and see how you can benefit directly from screencapture. If you would like to attend please email:

Julie van Vuuren , j.a.vanvuuren@reading.ac.uk you will then be sent full joining instructions.

Lunch and refreshments will be provided and, of course, we will be offering a range of home made cakes.
Please our blog page https://blogs.reading.ac.uk/grass/ or click on this link to view this very short explanatory screencast http://www.screencast.com/t/HAjtfUoxO8jg. This session aligns with A1-A4 and K2-K4 3 of the UKPSF.

Screencasts give you space to breathe at a conference

I gained an insight recently into a new benefit that we might all derive from screencasts. I gave a paper about the role of a placement tutor and, in particular, how the skills we develop as personal tutors have to be adapted to suit the role of placement tutor. I did not know anyone at the conference, and I was given the dreaded after lunch slot, so I knew I would need to keep everyone interested, or at least awake!

With these considerations in mind, I chose to show the audience, after some initial preamble, an animated screencast that I have made for my students, showing them how our academic placement scheme in English Literature works. (The screencast is in the GRASS screencast bank on this site.)

Screenshot academic placement screencast

What happened next was rather unexpected. During the few minutes of the screencast I saw shoulders relax. Some people smiled. A couple even laughed at some humorous animation on one of the slides. Nobody – nobody at all – looked at me. It was a delight. I could get my bearings whilst they watched, which helped me, but I also realised that this was really helping them. Better than any description I could have given them, this short screencast gave them the student’s eye view on how our placement system works. I felt confident that they knew exactly what I was talking about from then on, and also that they had a sense of how a student might feel during the early part of the journey towards a successful academic placement.

I have used Prezi and PowerPoint at conferences before, and sometime I have just talked to people without a visual aid, but this new experiment has inspired me to use screencasts in this setting in future.

What was perhaps most surprising was the way the audience members reacted during the Q &A session. They did ask me about being a placement tutor, of course, but I also answered several interesting questions about making screencasts and how I felt students might benefit from them. It seems that the appetite for screencasts as a pedagogical tool continues to increase – interesting times lie ahead!

Nicola Abram reveals how the entire English Literature cohort benefit from a screen capture approach

ell-ug-students

In April 2014 I was asked to revise a compulsory Part 1 module, ‘Research and Criticism’ studied by our entire cohort of around 180 part 1 students. This module has an ambitious tripartite aim: to teach key skills and theoretical concepts needed to study literature, while engaging with a selection of literary texts. Recognising that the skills training could be delivered more actively than through a traditional lecture format, I set about constructing a suite of screencasts: a short (3-5 minute) animation giving the key content, and signposting further information, which students could watch at their own pace and return to at leisure ( examples below).

The screencasts are accompanied by a series of short formative tasks that require students to learn by doing. Although I admit I did not have a particular student demographic in mind when making this change, I realise on reflection that this staged development of writing skills offers specific support to international students and EAL learners, who may be unfamiliar with UK academic conventions and benefit from an atomised approach to writing with regular formative feedback.

The combination of screencasts and formative tasks harnesses the power of constructive alignment where teaching process and assessment method are calculated to maximise students’ engagement with the subject and/or skills being taught.

Qualitative student feedback affirms the usefulness of the independent guided study and regular submission of work:

“The first [formative] tasks such as the bibliography were very useful to bridge the gap into HE”,

“All the feedback I received was very helpful and helped me improve my work” and “The screencasts were also a fantastic idea”.

And a couple of examples:

Citations and referencing (by me) http://www.screencast.com/t/aT8PolyDuH

Interpreting your essay questions (content by Martin Symington, RLF Fellow) http://www.screencast.com/t/anEmCSRQxHBi

Introductions (by David Brauner) http://www.screencast.com/t/zhyQClRxexN

Proof-reading (by me) http://www.screencast.com/t/EXn2au7r8Wj7

Registration open for Spring Lunch and Learn, 22nd March – Palmer G04 ‘Screen Capture in Action’

Floating GRASS

As deployment of screen capture technology increases within our teaching practice and student support across campus, we thought it would be prime time to share some of these real life experiences.  Attending this relaxed event is a great opportunity to hear from colleagues about their use of different screen capture tools.  There will be examples of applications used in teaching and learning that may inspire a new look at these technologies.  You will hear feedback colleagues on how screen capture helps in real time with the student learning experience.  And of course we will not hide from the possible challenges that make technology adoption challenging – we will help you see how these challenges can be overcome.  As always participants will get advice on adopting screencast approaches with hands on demos, and a chance to play and learn with the technology.

As in previous sessions we envisage that there will be two groups, those who are still at the drawing board stage or those who may have come to one session in the past but have yet to get going, and those who are already producing screencasts but are wishing to troubleshoot or share ideas. The “GRASS” project team will be on hand to solve problems or discuss options. There is still room for those new to screen capture and who want to come and see what the benefits are for their teaching.

 

 To attend you can register by emailing Julie van Vuuren: j.a.vanvuuren@reading.ac.uk

 

This session aligns with A1-A4 and K2-K4 3 of the UKPSF.

Patrick Lewis from Pharmacy shares student feedback on accessing Quicktime lectures

patrick lewis

“I’ve been using the Quicktime screen capture option on my Apple laptop to record all of my lectures this term as screen casts. This is great in that it allows me to save an MP4 video file of my lecture, and isn’t limited in the length of the session recorded, however there is the downside that the videos tend to be huge (for one recent workshop this ended up being well over a gigabite). That obviously presents some issues, shall we say, with regard to posting these videos on blackboard. The way I have got around this is by uploading the videos to youtube, and then providing a non-public weblink to the students. This means that the video can only be accessed by those with the weblink, and the lecture doesn’t appear on youtube searches.

This has proved pretty popular with the students. Anecdotally I have had a lot of positive feedback, and in a somewhat informal way to get some kind of grasp on what the students actually think I sent a (entirely unscientific) questionnaire out to see what the part 4 pharmacists thought – and those that replied liked it.”

If you would like to see an example of Patrick’s Quicktime lectures please follow the weblink below, this one is on Parkinson’s Disease: