by JAY COHEN

There has been much debate, over a long period of time, that the traditional didactic, on-campus lecture has either overstayed its welcome, or is an over-used pedagogical approach – perhaps both. Despite this, in on-line learning the two-three hour  classroom-based recorded lecture added to an LMS site without the appropriate pedagogical scaffolding appears ubiquitous. This may be due to the rapid switch to “on-line learning” (‘emergency remote teaching’), which merely replicated traditional teaching practices, or perhaps it was just a matter of convenience.

I suspect on-line students, who in all the instances that I am aware of, pay the same price for the on-line version of the subject as those attending the on-campus occurrence, would prefer not to be subjected to “second hand” re-used, rarely captioned or transcribed poor-quality classroom-based recorded video. On-line learning should preference purposefully curated videos, designed with a focus on the actual students for which the learning is intended.

Recent research by Wood, Symons, Falisse, Gray and Mkony  (2020) found that lecture-capture videos in on-line learning do not “lead to an increase in meaningful connections, discussion, or communications among students and their lecturer.” They concluded that these videos do not impact “teaching or cognitive presence” nor “social presence” (in line with  Garrison, Anderson and Archer‘s Community of Inquiry Framework (2000).

 Well-designed on-line learning incorporates technology that affords learning, where the design of learning activities is not reduced to pre-packaging knowledge as a commodity to be transmitted from the teacher to the student via a pre-recorded video. When on-line learning is well designed, it emerges in a mutually constructed socio-cultural manner, actively produced by teachers and learners working and learning together in authentic contexts.

Learning on-line from multimedia materials, including video, is highly dependent on if, and how, learning materials are chunked, assembled, edited, framed, presented, and scaffolded. Video in on-line learning should be concise, address a specific learning need and incorporate learner interaction, such as user-driven decision-making questions, polling, live chat or game elements. Used in this way video can be a welcome and engaging addition to the on-line learning environment that usually improves student learning.

The central argument is that on-line learning and teaching should involve a diverse assemblance of pedagogically suitable tools and resources, of which carefully curated videos form part of a considered, broader set of interactive learning resources.

Associate Professor Jay Cohen, Deputy Director Online Education Services, La Trobe University [email protected] @DrJay_Cohen