Reflections on CUSEIP: Student learning with Learn Plus

…and some pedagogical implications

by Karl Luke

During Summer 2017 I was successfully awarded a Cardiff University Student Education Innovation Projects (CUSEIP) placement for a project which aimed to “develop a framework for supporting effective student engagement with lecture recordings”. The successful applicant was an undergraduate Chemistry student – Ameen – and we worked collaboratively over an 8 week period in researching how students use lecture recordings within their learning practices. Based on the research data collected, Ameen led the design and development of a number of resources to support students in using educational recordings appropriately for learning.

This video presentation from Ameen outlines the data collection methodology used on the project and the outputs from the placement can be viewed on the Student Intranet here.

A key output of the placement was the development of an online tutorial created in Xerte. The tutorial is licensed for re-use and sharing via a Creative Commons license and can be found here.

Key findings

Our research supports existing lecture capture literature (for a recent literature review in this area Gabi Witthaus and Carol Robinson, from Loughborough University, have produced this report). In particular, our survey of 230 students reported that:

• lecture capture was helpful for learning;
• lecture recordings are used selectively by most students, to review specific sections of lecture content to reinforce their understanding of concepts;
• lecture capture is used to support note-taking and exam revision;
• lecture recording helps students with disabilities and aids inclusivity.

Importantly, during the playback of lecture recordings, multitasking and task-switching is a common activity. Our findings illustrates that students rarely watch recordings in isolation, and lecture capture reviewing is accompanied with other tasks and activities such as textbook reading, web browsing and note-taking. However, recent literature suggests that task switching can negatively impact learning and there are cognitive costs to multitasking. Future iterations of our CUSEIP outputs could look explicitly at this area in greater detail and unpack the pedagogical implications for student learning.

Figure 1: Word cloud depicting the self-reported activities carried out by students whilst watching lecture capture recordings (words generated from survey responses).

Another interesting finding we uncovered, which is little referenced within current lecture capture literature, is the use of recordings in social and collaborative ways. 25% of our surveyed students reported that they watch lecture captures in pairs or groups. Our findings highlight that some students actively engage with recordings using collaborative activities, such as collaborative note-taking, group quizzing/testing and discussion (figure 2). Current literature largely reports on individualistic study practices involving lecture capture and our research highlights a need to consider how recordings operate in collaborative settings.

Figure 2: Word cloud depicting the self-reported collaborative activities carried out by students whilst watching lecture capture recordings in groups/pairs (words generated from survey responses).

CUSEIP

Applications for CUSEIP is now currently open (the deadline is 9^th March 2018). The 8 week placement I supervised was one of the most rewarding experiences during my time at Cardiff University and it has deepened my knowledge of what it means to be a student at the University. I have also developed a greater appreciation of the importance of student-staff partnerships. Through authentic engagement, students can act as a positive driver for change in implementing technology enhanced learning. I am extremely proud we have been able to incorporate the student voice into the Learn Plus Service, through the development of our student resources, and I will strive to engage in student-staff partnerships in future projects I am involved in.