There are various reasons to use video and other online materials in education. This talk focuses on its potential in delivering more flexible learning at scale and the real and perceived costs of video, especially as an alternative to more traditional face-to-face delivery.
First we will look at the idea of scale itself, which has become dominated in much educational discourse by the rise of the MOOC and initiatives such as Kahn Academy . We will see that despite the more obvious per-course size of MOOCs in fact face-to-face higher education is far greater both in terms of student numbers and diversity. However, reuse of learning material, cross-institutional collaboration and pooling of learning analytics in the traditional sector faces challenges of educational diversity, data heterogeneity and organisational barriers including data privacy and IP.
We will also see that in terms of cost per hour of student engagement, high production value MOOC video production, as found in FutureLearn, edX and similar platforms, far exceeds that if more conventional delivery. However, more homespun 'YouTube-like quality production does offer the potential for widespread cost-effective adoption if its costs are amortised across different forms of delivery such as purely online, flipped class, or on-the -job learning.
In the UK context this matches recent initiatives, such as degree apprenticeships where there is a desire to create education with similar level and content, but delivered in very different forms.
The UK HE sector also is in a time of increased instability as government relaxation of student numbers has led to some universities and courses seeing massive student number drops and others massive increases. Both cause problems from over-stretched staff to widespread redundancies. We desperately need better ways to manage uncertainties in scale of which both tutor and student produced video will be a part.
One technique I've used over 20 years of working with challenges of online delivery in HE is t use methods of deconstruction/reconstruction. This involves analysing the student experiences provided by traditional learning methods such as lectures, labs, and seminars. For example, the lecture provides not just delivery of information, but also student motivation and implicit feedback (how many have fallen asleep!). Once we understand these underlying experiences, we are able to explore how these can be reconfigured for different media and devices, such as video and smartphones.
As a community of practice, perhaps we could defy the neoliberal marketisation of higher education and seek ways to create ways to reuse materials, share expertise and create vibrant cross-institutional student experiences.
Keywords: video, assessment, learning analytics, online learning, higher education
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