In UCISA’s recent Survey of Technology Enhanced Learning for higher education in the UK, Learning Technologists at universities and colleges were asked about their uptake of various tools designed to enhance the student learning experience. Covering everything from wikis to e-submission, what’s clear from the survey is that institutions are experimenting with an increasingly wide range of technologies to engage with their digitally-savvy student audiences.

As one of the most broadly used lecture capture and video management platforms in the world, every year we see our customers using video in new, exciting ways. In fact, a growing number of our partner institutions are using Panopto to facilitate many of the Technology Enhanced Learning approaches outlined by the UCISA survey. These include:

Creating online student presentations

Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia used our system to record student presentations at mass scale – capturing 400 presentations in 48 hours. The videos were used by students for both self-review purposes and for peer critique to identify areas for improvement. In the words of one of Sauder’s instructors, they took: “normal student meeting rooms with no built-in audio-visual equipment, set up a laptop with Panopto inside, and hit record. With six rooms running simultaneously, we could record 40 presentations in less than 90 minutes.”

Screencasting for the flipped classroom

Many academics regularly use Panopto to share knowledge with students and colleagues simply by capturing what’s happening on their screen. This technique can be used to deliver flipped classroom content, as we can see in this example from Dr Jeremy Pritchard at the University of Birmingham. It can also help academics offer compelling feedback on student assignments by allowing them to annotate a student’s essay on-screen while simultaneously offering in-depth advice and guidance via a voiceover or video of themselves. It can also just be used to share an insight with a fellow teacher. Screen capture makes it easy to create engaging and relevant ad-hoc content wherever a teacher might be – what Al Holloway from the University of Northampton describes not as screencasting, but as ‘sofa-casting’!

eSubmission for student assignments

The submission of student video assignments has become increasingly popular with universities. It is particularly valuable when the subject requires students to demonstrate a physical or technical skill. At Eastern Michigan University, for instance, students studying on the Orthotics and Prosthetics program are required to create at least two recordings each term, which remain in their digital portfolio as evidence of their performance. Other subjects that rely on showing that you have a particular skill, such as music, are also finding video to be an important new component of their students’ eSubmissions for assessment.

As students’ digital expectations of the university experience grow, these kinds of use cases are likely to become more and more mainstream. There is much anecdotal evidence to suggest that using video in these ways, as well as offering the option to watch lectures back on demand, can enhance student attainment and satisfaction. As institutional use of video to improve teaching and learning becomes established, we expect to see ever more inventive approaches to video emerge to support student engagement.

If you want to screencast, use video for student assignments, record student presentations, or if you just want to experiment with video at your institution, request a free trial to find out how Panopto can help support Technology Enhanced Learning at your institution.