CLIPP Board

Flipping Vital

In most examples at Aston,  Replay (Panopto) lecturecasts are made available to students immediately following the formal lecture. But “flipping” could provide another equally popular model?

What is flip teaching?
This refers to a method of instruction where classroom-based teaching time and traditional “homework” time are reversed (flipped). A teacher provides video lessons to be reviewed outside of class, which in turn gives teachers more time in class to focus on higher-order learning skills. Ref: http://ed.ted.com/about

I recently attended a webinar organised by the ViTAL SiG.  This caught my eye as it covered a new ideology called Flipping the classroom. The webinar by Carl Gombrich outlines his approach to successful flipping. Carl, records lectures, then encourages students to ask three questions about them (in the VLE) – and add a timestamp video reference.
Essentially this “movement” entails the use of short video “lectures” either using tools such as Panotpo, or shorter chunks of videos posted on YouTube, or hosted on sites like the popular Kahn Academy. Essentially the idea is to make traditional lecture material available to students BEFORE a lecture, in a more informal/accessible/varied format.

By supplementing the [chunked] video material with tasks/questions in a VLE or by using the new TED ed tool box – you extend the learning, and move towards a more inquiry based model. The students then arrive at the traditional lecture primed full of ideas they want to discuss – as per a standard tutorial format. We used to call this homework! The same outcome of promoting learner autonomy, inquiry, and problem solving, can be also achieved by posting any resources for students to work on before lectures into Blackboard or Pebblepad. The aim is to promote a more discursive, Q&A lecture format. The use of chunked video clips or lecturecasts in this new “flipping” ideology ensures that core course resources could be presented in a more engaging format (as opposed to text) and could therefore improve motivation?

Further information;

• http://www.ucl.ac.uk/teaching-learning/news/carl-gombrich-flipping-the-lecture-theatre
• http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/04/flipping-the-classroom/
• http://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/flipping-lectures/
• http://www.khanacademy.org/
• http://ed.ted.com/about
• http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDEducation 
• http://tlc.aston.ac.uk/aston-replay/case-study-lecture-capture-aston-university
• MIT & Harvard release Edx

Supporting learning

Dr Matthew Olczack explains how he used, and  subsequently researched web based resources to enhance traditional teaching and learning methods.  The research is of particular interest as Dr Olczack investigates aspects of self selection bias.  The overall results were very favourable, both in terms of the postive impact upon students learning, and their overall achievements.

More Backdrops for CLIPP Studios!

New Backdrop for SW305

Behold – another new backdrop for the CLIPP Studios in SW305! Along with its new counterpart – abstract design backdrop (design below) – it’s been specially designed to offer different ‘areas’ or ‘filming zones’ that will allow us to film with a variety of designs. The actual brief was to have designs that would work for seated and standing presentations, in both wide and tight shots. Of course, it also helps that this entire backdrop design screams Aston University – it promises to be well-used and highly recognisable in the months to come. The abstract design also utilises university colours but in a general purpose arrangement that allows for zoned filming and which also works as a wallpaper for the widest of wide shots.

These new additions bring our total backdrops to 5, meaning that we should have a design that suits your needs.

Of course, not everyone gets as worked up about backdrops as I do but you have to agree, they’re very impressive additions to the filming and branding capabilities of MLT.

Abstract backdrop design

Food for thought from 100 science videos

Here is a link for “The 100 Coolest Science videos on Youtube“, collected and recommended by the American website Onlineschool.net. It’s a site that specialises in recommending learning establishments to online learners.

The 100 videos feature everything from making soap bubbles containing dry ice and songs about the periodic table to a 75 minute lecture on Electron Spectroscopy from UC Berkeley, taking in such presentation as “a 3 minute skip through 100,ooo years of volcanic eruptions” and “an introduction to heredity“. Oh, and who wouldn’t want to learn chemical reactivity from this video?

What’s impressive about this list is both the variety of different teaching and presenting styles (animations, straight to camera, wacky experiments, songs, etc) and the many ways that complex information can be condensed into digestible videos. We at Media & Learning Technologies are always keen on making multimedia content that grabs the viewer and which are clear anc concise; these videos are a good cross-section through the world of online video learning and hopefully will provide plenty of inspiration to us and ayone who wants to make videos for learning.

Food for thought, indeed.

E-Portfolio Seminar and Workshop

The next CLIPP seminar on May 11th will provide an insight into the effective use of e-portfolios to enhance the student learning experience. Julie Hughes, Principle Lecturer, and Emma Purnell, Blended Learning Advisor, from the University of Wolverhampton will demonstrate their experience, use of, and engagement with, e-portfolios over a number of years. They will also consider possible strategies on easy and effective development and the use of e-portfolios in learning and teaching.

All are welcome to the seminar in SW309 from 1:00 – 2:00 but please email Lyn Cottrell (l.cottrell) if you want to participate in the hands-on workshop from 2:30 to 3:45 in SW308 as numbers may be limited.