Associate Professor Amanda Telford
Co-Ordinator for the Beyond the Classroom Course (TCHE2652)
School of Education
Due to COVID19, my year 3 students were no longer able to complete their teaching placement face- to-face during semester 1. To pivot, I recreated a new assessment task underpinned by design thinking and formative assessment approaches which required the students to design, produce and then evaluate 6 teaching episodes that were to encourage secondary school students (and their families) to be active during ISO during remote learning. The brief was to produce short accessible clips on YouTube or other platform that were between 3-6 minutes outlining key information such as safety, description of the activity, key tips and the benefits to health.
Students had to peer-review each other (2 student min) work and build on the feedback to inform the development of the final 4 clips. I provided verbal feedback about each clip, their planning, and reflection documentation on my phone as it was too long for the Canvas audio function in speed grader, and then I uploaded the audio file into speed grader. Students generally shot their digital clips using their smart phones, they were encouraged to adopt a character and props for their series and be creative. The videos produced were very resourceful and passed on to partner schools to be used with real students, teachers and the staff within the University.
Benefits
Students developed skills to teach online, using new technologies to capture and edit their videos and upload to showcase their work. Students had the option to share their creations and over 90% agreed to make these available online for various University partners and staff. We called the series ISO active and the clips were also included in the School of Education Dean’s newsletter daily for about a month. It has created a range of resources for the pre-service teachers themselves but also for partner schools, teachers and staff and students at RMIT. We also shared the idea with several other universities.
Challenges
The feedback provided to students was very thorough but time consuming. It is really important to get students to send you or a peer a pilot for formative feedback, so they can refine their screen craft, production skills and editing skills for a higher quality summative assessment. Students supported each other with the challenges of the technology as the peer review (x2 peers) was required. Also, the final placement reports were based upon their teaching performances in the online teaching episodes so once again increase to workload.
Advice and Tips
- Have a clear idea about the target audience for the end product, and the components that must feature in the submission.
- Embedding peer review that must be reflected upon in the evaluation component with a discussion about how it informed subsequent clips made is essential.
- Other tips encourage students to ensure they are anonymous and use appropriate and professional language etc. Digital consent was also used. Ensure if using YouTube, they set their videos to private.