{"id":376,"date":"2019-06-13T10:57:28","date_gmt":"2019-06-13T10:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/digitaleducation\/?p=376"},"modified":"2020-01-07T10:54:51","modified_gmt":"2020-01-07T10:54:51","slug":"part-1-video-lectures-for-a-partially-flipped-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/digitaleducation\/part-1-video-lectures-for-a-partially-flipped-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Part 1: Video Lectures for a Partially Flipped Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article has been divided into two parts. Part 1 is about the Production process and Part 2<\/a> discusses Student engagement, feedback, and reflections.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

In the summer of 2018, I challenged myself to produce video \u201cprelude\u201d lectures to create a partially flipped classroom for an Organic Chemistry module. This first blog entry describes the creation process.<\/p>\n

\"firstOne of the major hurdles in teaching organic Chemistry (and there are a lot of these) is the amount of content that it seems necessary to cover in class to be able to do justice to each key topic<\/strong> within a lecture course. After starting teaching on a first-year undergraduate module in 2017, I quickly felt that, despite my best intentions, my lectures were turning into the dense info-dumps<\/strong> that I had often dozed off in during my own undergraduate years. I knew I wanted to include more opportunities for class discussion and active learning<\/strong>, but fully flipping the lectures felt impractical.<\/p>\n

\"effectiveI found inspiration from several YouTube channels (notably, \u2018Crash Course\u2019), and decided to create a set of 7 videos<\/strong>, each covering the introductory essentials of a topic \u2013 effectively a revision of A-Level material<\/strong>. This would allow me to quickly move onto more complex concepts in lectures, and provide time<\/strong> for other class activities \u2013 creating a \u201cpartially flipped\u201d classroom.<\/p>\n

Scripts were written, a suitable camera was found (my phone) and a reasonable amount of money was spent on a decent lavalier microphone. I taught myself advanced PowerPoint animation techniques (with a little help again from YouTube), and found suitable free audio and video editing software (Audacity and Shotcut). Filming was completed on two separate days, my flat rearranged into a makeshift studio \u2013 complete with a rickety construct of books and Lego supporting the camera! Despite the finished videos being 4-10 minutes in length, recording took a lot longer as I frequently forgot my lines \u2013 perhaps next time I\u2019ll invest in an autocue\u2026<\/p>\n

\"part<\/p>\n

Each video probably took about 3 days of work in total to complete \u2013 scripting and filming could be done in a couple of hours, but animating and editing took much longer (and put a lot of strain on my computer at points). Additionally, I also created an animated title sequence, partly as a means to hone my skills, and also to create a unifying \u201cbrand\u201d across the series of lectures<\/strong>. The finished videos were uploaded to YouTube to make use of its auto-captioning feature to provide subtitles (correct about 95% of the time) and then linked to the module\u2019s KEATS page.<\/p>\n

Each video was set to release immediately after the first 7 lectures of a 10 lecture course \u2013 students were informed of the videos during the first lecture, so the videos were acting as preludes to lectures 2-8 (the reasons for not providing any for 9 and 10 will be explained in part 2). The day of the premier of the first video arrived \u2013 now I had to see if the students would make use of it\u2026<\/p>\n

Useful links<\/p>\n