CRJ Week 4, What have I learnt?

“digital video allows students to control the speed and repetition of content" (Stein & Graham 2020: 14). 

Our first forum questions have made me delve into Evengi’s valuable feedback from leading me to realise that I need to think about how I can link my lesson and add justification using pedagogical theories of the course for the assessment. Katie Gimbar’s video: ‘Katie Gimbar's Flipped Classroom - why it has to be me!’ has made me realise a few key points. For instance giving arguments as to why it is useful to create your own content.

“When creating audio and video podcasts for supporting student learning in HE, usually what matters much more than high production values and fancy ‘bells and whistles’, are the pedagogic design aspects. Koumi (2013), discussing instructional videos, has claimed that “an indispensable affordance of any medium is its ability to secure learners’ cognitive engagement and constructive reflection” – ie its pedagogic value and affordance. The skills of authors to secure cognitive engagement and constructive reflection (hence learning) often tend to be vastly underestimated.”

I have learnt about the Koumi (2013) design principles which for me contains clear and concise points to remember when creating learning content for students. One point which I have taken from the Koumi principles is to ask questions to engage students cognitive engagement. One point which I feel that I could improve is to potentially conclude my video in a more detailed way. Time management was on my mind, so I feel that I could have summarised the LOs further. I will see if this comes up in my feedback from my students?

Anderson et al (2006) proposed that the educator’s task is “to create a coherent narrative path through the mediated instruction and activity set such that students are aware of the explicit and implicit learning goals and activities in which they participate” (p.6)

I have been feeling quite anxious regarding the recording of my flipped classroom element, but after listening to Andy’s podcast, in which he highlights the importance of the content rather than the video production value.

I have tackled my anxieties and recorded my webcast video. I used zoom and started a session with myself, recording me talking in the studio. I read a script and found that I could create a relaxed but personal recording. It took 3 takes to complete as I went over my desired 10minute aim the first try and made a mistake with my screen sharing on my second. I am interested in the feedback from my students as to whether they found it helpful, professional enough and informative. As my students are my friends, I have already had one piece of feedback. With so much thought going into the recording and content, I had not given the deliverance any thought. I sent the video via wetransfer rather than sending a link via youtube. My friend said that is was then not accessible on their phone and took a long while to download. This would obviously make the purpose of making a asynchronous video very inaccessible, and would likely result in few students participating. This is something I will add into my feedback. I will now research how to upload the resource onto youtube for my assessment.

Watching the Kings College London video, titles ‘Narrative Powerpoints’ allowed me to really consolidate my justification for applying the blended learning to my Colouring Clays Course, by applying their case study to my practice by saying that although all of my students are told that to sign up to my course they are required to have an intermediate knowledge of clay work, I often find that my students sometimes might say that they are intermediate level, but on the day of teaching, from my point of view, they might only have basic knowledge. This means that often I have to take more time supporting these students, resulting in my actual intermediate students just waiting around. Further prior support is needed to start the synchronous lesson at the same level of understanding.

References

Anderson, E. S., Cox, D. and Thorpe, L. N. (2009) ‘Preparation of educators involved in interprofessional education’, Journal of Interprofessional Care, 23(1), pp. 81–94.

Kings College London. (2014) Narrated Powerpoints: TEL Case Study [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVeB1DtOV0w (accessed 22.06.25)

Koumi, J (2013)  Pedagogic Design Guidelines for Multimedia Materials: A Call for Collaboration between Practitioners and Researchers, Journal of Visual Literacy, 32:2, 85-114. 

Gimbar, K. (2012). ‘Katie Gimbar's Flipped Classroom - why it has to be me!’[Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMfSLXluiSE  (accessed 16.06.25)