Is it Real Teaching? Post-Graduate Students’ Perceptions and Use of Online Video Tutorials

Citation

Moran E () Is it Real Teaching? Post-Graduate Students’ Perceptions and Use of Online Video Tutorials. e-learning workshop for CELD, Stirling.

Abstract
Use of recorded lectures using "Listen Again" has become an accepted part of the approach to teaching and learning in the modern university. It seems a logical next step in the development of blended delivery to diversify our teaching and learning approach by replacing lectures with specially prepared online tutorials. In theory, such tutorials are not simply recorded lectures, but use a range of media and design strategies to make the input engaging. Among the proposed advantages are the ability to embed quizzes that allow learners to test themselves and repeatability, which allows learners to refer back to relevant input for assessment purposes. This presentation reports a small scale study funded by SELF of post-graduate students' perceptions of online video tutorials compared to face to face lectures, their use of the videos and the learning strategies they employed while watching them. Data was collected from online tracking of user-interaction, usage statistics collected by Succeed, and semi-structured interviews. Findings suggest that while learners recognise and value the strengths of online delivery of teaching input and interact with the material in purposeful ways, they also recognise and value the social interaction of face to face teaching and learning. The presentation will argue that, in the same way that the DVD has not completely replaced an outing to the cinema, online video tutorials are unlikely to completely replace a strong face to face component in higher education in the near future. It will also discuss the pedagogical implications for both the design of online video tutorials and associated face to face classes.

Keywords
video tutorial; blended delivery