In this assignment, students are to demonstrate their understanding of the processes and activities involved in the planning, performance and conclusion of a financial report audit through the creation of a hypothetical scenario. The assignment also aimed to help students develop key skills and attributes of a effective auditor, according to a survey by Forbes and KPMG (2015):
This assessment format has been implemented in many Auditing and Assurance units, not only at Monash campuses but also in a graduate audit unit at San Francisco State University. With its four-year history and counting, this assessment has become a remarkable tradition.
This year, I caught up with Damien, Ashna Prasad and Lisa Powell to learn more about how they have managed to successfully facilitate role play when students are not physically in the room. The answer is, unsurprisingly, technology. More specifically, empowering students to showcase their creativity through the use of technology.
Which aspects of assessment design have stayed the same?
Students are in groups of 4-5 members
Provision of written instructions
Detailed marking guide for storyboard (group) and role play (individual and group evaluation)
Group activities to help students connect with group members and build rapport
Role-play/presentation tips videos created in collaboration with Monash Centre of Theatre and Performance
Visual illustrations and visual performance art workshop run by a professional artist
What's new?
Hybrid cohort: some groups met face-to-face, and some worked completely online
Format of the role play performance: video submission, instead of live performance
Instructional videos for the assessments and other resources
Students experienced less stress and anxiety of role-playing live, while showing more creativity through the creative process of making videos.
Show time!
Here are some highlights from student performances. Enjoy!
These snippets of student role play are a testament to the power of students' creativity when they are given the space, guidance and autonomy to express it. The team and other colleagues have also written a paper about their teaching practice, and highlighted "enhanced creativity and human skills", as well as "high levels of engagement, motivation, and enthusiasm" among students.
"Creativity in intelligence having fun."
Albert Einstein
It goes without saying that contextualised and creative forms of assessment bring about challenges in terms of time, resources and student reception. Upon reflection, the team shared about a small minority of students who struggled with the lack of structure and ambiguity from the revised assessment format (Powell et al., 2015). Improvements such as more visual aids, video demonstrations and scaffolding towards dealing with ambiguous situations and uncertainties are in store for future student cohorts.
How have you innovated to transform your teaching for a hybrid or online environment? We'd love to hear about your experience in the comments below.
It is very easy to let multimedia content go by unnoticed these days, only because they have become so ingrained in modern society. Ever since the rise of video-sharing platforms like Youtube in the last two decades, and the dominance of other social video players such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat (to name a few), videos have disrupted the way we absorb and digest information for good.
More videos are being watched every day on Facebook (over 8 billion videos in 2016), videos are getting shorter (up to 2 minutes long), and more than 50% of videos are watched on mobile devices (TechCrunch, 2016; Wistia, 2016; Ooyala, 2016, as cited in Lua, 2017). MOOC providers such as Coursera, Lynda and edX have attracted millions of users and are proving the demand for e-learning options. This speaks volume about the future of information consumption, and the inevitable changes in education alike.
Young generations are now considered “digital natives” who are growing up with every aspects of their life submerged in technology (LiteracyPlanet, 2016). Education at K12 level has been preparing children to be equipped for future work in the 21st century, so it is imperative for higher education institutions to continue with this roadmap and incorporate digital technologies in teaching and learning.
Why should we care about teaching with videos?
You have probably come across this video of Salman Khansharing inspiring stories on how he accidentally embarked on a journey to lead a global change in education technology and pedagogical methodology.
The idea is by that by utilising technology that is seemingly dehumanising, specifically talking into a microphone and illustrating on a screen, Salman was able to bring a human touch to the learning experience in three ways:
First, by allowing lectures to be watched online prior to class, valuable time in class is now devoted to meaningful interactions between teacher and students, as well as among fellow students.
Second, learning is personalised to students’ pace and to their level of understanding. Teachers are enabled to identify students’ deficiency and have more meaningful conversations with students about their progress based on video analytics.
And third, videos have removed boundaries in terms of time and space, i.e. limited class time and physical classroom space. Now students are able to watch, pause, rewind their lessons in the comfort of their own home.
All of these benefits point to an increase in efficiency in education, which has been threatened by the increase in size of cohorts and restricted time and space at many institutions. As a result, our effort in maintaining high quality teaching is facing critical challenges, and video teaching could be the answer. Ljubojevic and colleague’s research (2014) echoed the same sentiments when they found that using videos in teaching has led to an increase in students’ engagement and efficiency of the self-learning process, their satisfaction, and overall improved quality of learning experience.
More importantly, this approach puts students in the driver’s seat and encourage them to take ownership of their own learning journey. Videos could assist students in mastery learning, allowing them to explore and review a subject matter as much as they would like to in private, while taking the load off of lecturers (Galbraith, 2004).
What’s the catch?
The blended teaching method and flipped classroom model have sparked many fascinating debates regarding its efficacy and its impact on the effectiveness of teaching and learning. It is an evidence-based practice, and whether these models are suitable for every educator is subject to professional judgement. The literature has not offered a systemic look on the outcomes of using videos in teaching, and a consistent framework in how videos could be used to optimise the teaching and learning experience.
What is the best practice for using videos in teaching?
What we can suggest, however, is how to best adopt videos in your teaching to achieve the optimal results:
Videos could be considered as a complementary element of lecture delivery, not necessarily a substitution (Ljubojevic et al., 2014; Ramlogan et al., 2013). Keep your videos short and sweet, as this keeps students focused on the relevant information and support students' self-learning process(Ruiji, 2012).
Videos need to be accompanied by interactive learning activities (Meguid & Collins, 2017). A few simple examples include using Mars and Poll Everywhere in real time to keep students engaged and gaining immediate feedback on students’ understanding, or accompanying online lectures with interactive content such as H5P activities on Moodle. For more ideas on how to engage students on Moodle, visit the support site.
Constructive alignmentis still at the core of teaching, regardless of the chosen tools and teaching approach. A connection between video materials and other components of the learning package must be clearly and actively communicated to students. Lectures are advised to be mindful of closing the loop between pre-class, in-class and post-class activities, and how videos could support the achievement of learning outcomes.
What is available to us?
Monash has been progressive in this space for years. We have seen a significant growth in the use of lecture recordings, online lesson packages, internally produced animation videos and YouTube content to support teaching. This year, we are excited about the introduction ofPanopto, the new video management platform to help manage your teaching video content. From Semester 1, 2018, you will be able to create, edit, upload, store, search and share videos all in one secure place. Panopto will be integrated fully with Moodle so that all learning materials are centrally stored. Read more on Panopto in our blog, and be sure to get yourself up to speed by watching a quickstart guidefor Panopto.
Further reading:
Galbraith, J., (2004, September). Active viewing:
and oxymoron in video-based instruction?. Paper presented at the Society
for Applied Learning Technologies Conference. Retrieved from designer.50g.com/docs/Salt_2004.pdf
Khan, S. [Ted]. (2011, March 09). Let’s use video to
reinvent education. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education
LiteracyPlanet. (2016). eLearning in Australian
classrooms [Report]. Retrieved
from https://www.literacyplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/LiteracyPlanet-eLearning-Report.pdf
Ljubojevic, M., Vaskovic, V., Stankovic, S., &
Vaskovic, J. (2014). Using supplementary video in multimedia instruction as a
teaching tool to increase efficiency of learning and quality of
experience. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed
Learning, 15(3).
Lua, A. (2017, February 16). 50 Video Marketing
Stats to Help You Create a Winning Social Media Strategy in 2017 [Blog
post]. Retrieved
from https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-video-marketing-statistics
Meguid, E. A., & Collins. M.
(2017). Students'Perceptions of Lecturing Approaches: Traditional
versus Interactive Teaching. Advances in Medical Education and
Practice (8), 229–241.
Partnership for 21st Century Learning.
(n.d.) Framework for 21st century learning. Retrieved January 29,
2018, from http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework
Ramlogan, S., Raman, V., & Sweet, J. (2014). A
comparison of two forms of teaching instruction: video vs. live lecture for
education in clinical periodontology. European Journal of Dental
Education, 18(1), 31-38.
Ruiji, L. (2012). The development on multimedia
teaching resources based on information processing theory. International
Journal of Advancements in Computing Technology, 4, 58-64.
Tuesday, 17 October 2017
A Video Solution for the University
Finally there will be a video solution for the whole university. Monash university does not have a video management system at this moment. Lecturers create videos with different software programmes. Some might upload them to Youtube or Vimeo while some just upload the video files into Moodle. Once the lecturer leaves the university, the Google account might be closed and the videos might get lost on Youtube.
MUOLT has been investigating a complete video management system for the university and they are very close to implement the Panopto system for us. In this month's tool tips, we would like to introduce it and you can think about what we can do with it next semester.
Panopto Video
Panopto is a video platform designed by Carnegie Mellon University for the specific needs of businesses and universities. It is used to manage, live stream, record, and share videos across the university. It also makes it easy to search and use the video resources that created and shared by your Monash colleagues.
The following video is a demo of the Panopto platform application in education industry. It provides a video content management system for creating, uploading, managing and sharing video and audio files. It also has the ability to do lecture recording and it is a great tool to do pre-class lecture videos as it can integrate interactive quizzes in the videos.
What is good?
What is so good about it? Let's count:
It can create and edit video/audio files. The staff are using so many different programmes to do that. Now we will have a same one and there will not be a format issue in the future.
It makes it easy for the university to upload, manage, share, and search for Monash video and audio files. Even after the lecturers leave Monash, the resources will stay.
You can add interactive quizzes into the video easily to test the student understanding
It has detailed report function to indicate the students and the time that they spend on watch your videos.
It is perfectly embedded into Moodle and you can add your videos very easily. (Not yet working in our Moodle at this moment)
Hey, it sounds really good. How about taking a look and playing with some examples by yourselves? Go to www.panopto.com and click Free Trial on the top right.
What is not so good?
We will have to wait until MUOLT and eSolution put it in the university system. It might take some time. Hopefully it can be done before next semester.
What's in it for us?
With Panopto, you can create and edit video/audio files easily. You do not have to look for a software programme to record your desktop screen and webcam or look for a programme to trim the videos anymore.
Also, you will be able to search and use the shared video from our Monash Panopto. You might be able to use the video resources in the same topic from other teachers without worrying about copyright issues.
And it would be great to see the student activity report about their timelines watching your videos. Therefore you can find out which videos are attractive and which are not so that you can improve the videos in the future.
If you are interested, give it a try. Keep following our TaLT communications. We will introduce more details about our Monash Panopto in the near future.
Monday, 31 July 2017
Starting YouTube videos from a point in time
Do you ever want a YouTube video that you are using as part of a lecture or embedded in a presentation to start at particular time? It's easy to do: find the point on the video from which you want the playback to begin (3:43 in our example), then click Share, and check the check-box that says Start at. You will see that the start time has been added to your shareable url. Easy!
