This post documents Carlotta Ghigi’s observation of one of my asynchronous resources. Copied below is the form that documents the observation and subsequent reflection.
Size of student group: 27
Observer: Carlotta Ghigi
Observee: Rujana Rebernjak
Part 1
What is the context of this session/artefact within the curriculum?
This is a pre-recorded lecture that is part of cross-school second year curriculum in Contextual and Theoretical Studies in the Design School at LCC. In this unit, students can choose one of nine thematic strands to follow. Each strand has 7 ‘lectures’ that address particular aspects of the topic. This resource is part of the Technologies strand that I designed. It sets out key theoretical debates around technologies/technological development, introducing students to conceptual ideas that help them contextualize digital technologies which is particularly relevant for their design practice/experimentation with digital tools.
After watching the video asynchronously, students then join a 2hr seminar to discuss these ideas further.
How long have you been working with this group and in what capacity?
The unit is delivered in Block 2, and this was the second session of the block, so only 2 weeks. I am also not delivering the weekly seminars for this unit.
What are the intended or expected learning outcomes?
Students learn key terms around technology/technological development to be able to critical engage with technology in their practice.
Students question technological ‘progress’ considering it in the wider historical/cultural/political context, questioning the idea that technological development and innovation is always a force for good and considering the unequal impacts of technological development.
What are the anticipated outputs (anything students will make/do)?
Students watch the video and read the text, they will further discuss this material in their seminar.
Are there potential difficulties or specific areas of concern?
Yes, students may not watch the video –in seminars there is usually half the group who has not watched it ahead of time (but might watch it after the session). Is the language/pace too difficult – slides and transcript are provided but is that sufficient? What else can be done in terms of engagement and accessibility of the material?
How will students be informed of the observation/review?
Does not apply – pre-recorded lecture.
What would you particularly like feedback on?
As above – it would be good to understand how the material can be made more accessible/engaging. We are currently reviewing this model of delivery with flipped-classroom, pre-recorded content structure, so it would be worth knowing whether it is work keeping it, why, what might be some benefits and what are the challenges.
How will feedback be exchanged?
In writing and potential teams meeting.
Part Two
Observer to note down observations, suggestions and questions:
Rujana shared with me the link to Moodle, which allowed me to access not only the recording but also the environment in which it is shared with the students. The Moodle page is clearly organised, and slides, transcript and additional readings are listed on the same page as the recording, making them easily accessible.
The recording consists of a slides view, with inset video of Rujana delivering the lecture. This adds an important element of presence, on behalf of the lecturer, which makes the recording more engaging and user friendly. The slides often have highlighted text to focus on the key elements in the text, they are however text heavy at times and it may be difficult to connect the spoken word with the text – ideally the highlighting of the text could be dynamic, and this could be achieved with animation in PowerPoint, or the use of a pointer (which is available in blackboard collaborate, but I am unsure about the availability of such tool on Panopto or PowerPoint).
The lecture includes theory and examples to support the teaching; this allows the students to immediately relate the learning with something more tangible, which will enable them to approach the following seminar with more clarity. Examples are often accompanied by pictures which makes the slide immediately easier to read – in my opinion it would be beneficial to include images on the text heavy slides too, not necessarily to explain or clarify the teaching, but to offer an element that aids assimilation of the knowledge, by connecting an image to a concept.
Rujana’s tone throughout the lecture is calm and friendly, which makes for a reassuring learning experience. There is some background noise throughout the video, which Rujana acknowledge from the beginning. This is a low-level disturbance that does not act as a distraction, but can strangely act as a recall of attention. As an ADHD individual, and I have found my concentration drifting away at times: the banging noises recalled my attention and actually helped me focus on the lecture. I would not recommend including this in lectures on purpose, but I wouldn’t suggest re-recording this one either. Instead, it makes me consider how to include recall strategies in recordings, to keep the audience engaged.
Rujana expresses some concern, in her pre-notes, that a certain number of students often don’t view the recordings before the seminars. This could be lessened by timely reminder emails to students,(the day before?) including direct links to the videos (It is unclear if this is practiced). Engagement is something that can only be encouraged, not secured, so it may help to have a strategy in place to obviate the detrimental effect to students’ participation in the following seminar. It may be helpful to include, in the seminar, an amount of discussion between students, so those who watched the recordings can bring the others up to speed, whilst also clarifying the learning in their minds by speaking it out.
I would support the use of this format – recording before seminar – going forward, because it allows the student to approach the more academic part of the course in a safer and comfortable way, that can be customized to their learning needs.
Part Three
Observee to reflect on the observer’s comments and describe how they will act on the feedback exchanged:
Over the last few years, Contextual and Theoretical Studies have been using pre-recorded resources instead of live ‘lectures’ across all our units. This flipped-classroom model was introduced during Covid, and we continued working with it over the last three years partly due to timetabling constraints (limited access to lecture theatre and teaching spaces, which leaves us with 2hr weekly seminar sessions). However, during this time we have also started to question the efficacy of this model, for both students and staff: some students struggle to engage with this material or don’t have time to watch before the seminar, which means they may not attend the live session if they feel they didn’t prepare enough for it; staff often feel a lack of agency as they need to ‘deliver’ material prepared by someone else and the coherence of the material within the whole syllabus seems to be a challenge (for each Theme within this unit, a range of lecturers prepare the videos/readings – this is to expose students to a variety of voices and decolonize the curriculum).
It was really useful, therefore, to use this resource as part of my observation to see how it may be perceived by students/staff, as it is sometimes difficult to get student feedback on this directly. It was good that Carlotta emphasized the value of the resource and the way it may support different learning needs – i.e. students who may need to ‘digest’ material more slowly for example or those who need to return to it multiple times. I think it might be worth exploring how we can integrate these resources a bit more with ‘live’ delivery. We do send weekly emails and reminders about work to prepare in advance but we still always get only about half the group who watches the resource before the seminar. Therefore, rather than asking students to watch ahead of time, perhaps we might deliver the content of the pre-recorded lecture live: i.e. use the slides and narrate/discuss them in class (rather than just playing the video which can be kind of dull), while students can then return to the pre-recorded material later on.
I completely appreciate the point about ‘text heavy’ slides. I have noticed this in my live sessions as well, and need to try to work harder on identifying examples of design practice that can be linked to more abstract, theoretical concepts. This way, some of these ideas would be more tangible for students and they could relate them more easily to their own practice. Perhaps adopting a more ‘object-based learning’ approach to these sessions – even if the objects are only shown digitally as images – would make it easier for students to grasp the concepts.
Going forward, I might try to develop a ‘case study image bank’ of projects/objects/artwork/images that I can tap into when devising these resources so that it’s easier to identify material to refer to. Time constraints are really what is often liming the research that goes into these materials, so having some pre-prepared interesting ‘stuff’ to show in relation to theoretical and historical ideas might be a good way of approaching it.
It might be worth noting that I have received positive feedback from tutors working with this resource. They said it did initiate some engaging discussions in class, so even though there are limitations to it that I recognise, it seems to be an overall useful pedagogic tool. However, I will work more to identify ways it can be integrated differently into live delivery to engage students more consistently, as well as considering how the presentation itself can become more interactive.