08 November 2019 - Bursary helps influence the production of immersive video content at London Metropolitan University
Media and Learning Video in Higher Education
I was first made aware of the ucisa bursary by my director and immediately explored relevant conferences and events that could support my professional development. I regularly attend professional AV events in the UK but often find that these are not specifically aimed at educational practitioners and I was therefore, keen to find something that would offer this.
Media and Learning 2019: Video in Higher Education was the perfect conference for me as it was not only very specific in exploring the role of video in higher education but the conference programme echoed many of the areas that I was involved with as a specialist media support officer at London Metropolitan University. Scheduled sessions surrounding VR/360-degree video and lecture recording immediately caught my attention as these are two disciplines that I am directly involved with and I was interested to see how other practitioners within higher education were applying this in order to support teaching and learning.
The conference was excellent and it was refreshing to engage with multimedia professionals from the education sector. There were so many interesting sessions to attend but two in particular really stood out for me and I am delighted that I have been able to draw upon these since returning to London Metropolitan University in order to influence and enhance my own video productions.
Matt Gilooly’s presentation on ‘Using immersive video to enhance simulated practice for health and social care students’ was an interesting case study as it echoes something that we are currently implementing at London Metropolitan University. It was fascinating to see how creative technologies had been employed by Matt at the University of Derby to offer students an immersive learning space that can often be challenging to replicate in traditional teaching settings.
Witnessing Mike Wald’s automatic speech recognition solution for lecture videos, Synote reminded me of the importance of ensuring that all video content is accessible to all. This is something that we have started to implement across our entire video output at London Metropolitan University.
I was keen to present my findings to academic and technical staff at London Met and delivered a session on the benefits of 360/VR video at the annual teaching and learning conference. This resulted in the planning and development of a number of projects designed to support the teaching and learning process. One project that has recently been completed and is currently being distributed to students was the OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examinations) Project – a series of immersive videos for dietetics students undertaking the observed structured clinical exam. We are in the process of gaining feedback from students and I am currently planning a research paper with the academic staff that have been involved with the project.
In addition to the successful production of video projects, news of my bursary and the OSCE Project were distributed to the PR & Communications Team at London Met and the success of my application was distributed to staff within the ITS department. Details of the OSCE Project are currently in the process of being distributed to senior management within the university as there are plans for wider distribution and production of immersive video content. I am hoping that this experience can be used as a positive case study to help influence future productions by staff and students.
I have since become much more aware of ucisa via their social media platforms and have joined relevant mailing lists to ensure that I am aware of current developments within the video and multimedia field of higher education. I was also fortunate to meet many practitioners at the conference and have remained in contact with fellow colleagues from other London HE institutions. We are planning to visit each other’s universities to compare and contrast the ways in which we support staff and students through video and I am sure this will be a positive experience for both.
I am currently planning to attend the conference again in 2020 and along with academic staff at London Met, also hope to submit the OSCE Project proposal for the Medea Awards as this is something that we feel is a successful resource and I am pleased that it has been developed as a result of the great experience I had at the 2019 conference. To see my short film of my experience at the conference, click here: https://londonmet.box.com/s/6vwymf7dc26ed9fm3u0fmebnxl8vc4bn. For my film on OSCE, click here https://vimeo.com/365076920.
