Volume Two - Academic Conferences

Angela Shapiro and Aidan Johnston
feedback also suggested it was difficult to see the PowerPoint slides in the background and that
seeing the presenter offered little value. (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Project journey
5. Evaluation of first year of funded project
The initial evaluation approach that was selected, asked users to evaluate the usefulness of the two
completed vidcasts on essay writing and writing final year reports through feedback from the Survey
Monkey on-line questionnaire service. Producing vidcasts to enhance students’ learning is only a
worthwhile activity if students use the vidcasts. It was important, therefore, to know what students
thought about this type of delivery and whether they felt more engaged in the student learning
experience. Accordingly, the questionnaire was placed on the ELS website in November 2009.
However, feedback was slow and only 50 questionnaires were completed. Nevertheless, the
responses in the main were positive, and users (both students and staff) gave recommendations for
improvement. At the same time statistics were collected from Google Analytics which indicated that
over 1,000 users had accessed the vidcasts, which clearly indicated that they were being utilised.
The respondents to the Survey Monkey online survey stated that they preferred the vidcast to be
delivered in shorter sections; that they wanted brief summaries of the content and suggested
improvements in navigation. These changes were subsequently actioned; shorter chapters consisting
of no more than five minutes of content were added along with detailed chapter descriptions.
Improvements were made to address the navigation issues by upgrading the web video player to
allow users to control navigation. In response from feedback from post-graduate level students, an
additional vidcast on writing literature reviews was produced. (Figure 1).
6. Evaluation of second year of funded project - the four new vidcasts
In January 2011, an additional four vidcasts were placed within GCU’s institutional virtual learning
environment (VLE). This new approach was selected to allow us to target this particular academic
school (BNE) and engage the students in their own learning environment rather than placing the
content on the ELS website, which was used previously.
The four new vidcasts are also set within the national context of exploring new assessment and
feedback practices, the purpose of which is to enhance the student experience, and more specifically
to support the development of self-regulated learners (Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006). We wanted to
discover the following:
Can increased dialogue make for more effective feedback as perceived by our students?
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