Transitioning from face-to-face to 'video teaching'; supporting lecturers in developing their video teaching skills.

The research examined the support needs of a group of higher education lecturers (Tourism Team, Inholland University, Amsterdam/Diemen) to develop their ‘video teaching’ skills. A needs analysis was conducted including 23 interviews with staff (from director to lecturers) to establish criteria for a prototype ‘video teaching’ workshop. Workshop participants view micro web lectures in advance as preparation. Expert and participant feedback has been incorporated into subsequent workshop iterations. As the number of team members who had followed the workshop increased, momentum gained within the team; lecturers took initiative to develop and pre-record their own lecture content for informational and flipped classroom use. The availability of the workshop (offered from within the team), resulted in a relatively high take up rate for this voluntary activity. The team is now moving from ‘video teaching’ early adopters to the stage of the early majority on the technology adoption curve. INTRODUCTION There is a rapid and significant increase in the use of teaching through video in Higher Education (Bates, 2015; Bichsel, 2013; Hansch et al., 2015; Johnson et al., 2016; van den Brink et al., 2014). Recent research into the impact of video in Higher Education has examined the didactic effectiveness of ‘video teaching’ and the impact on student lecture attendance (Filius & Lam, 2010), student use of recorded lectures (Gorissen, 2013). the different viewing behaviour of students (De Boer, 2013), possible cost savings and improved study results (Martyn, 2009), the teacher experience of making web lectures (Preston et al., 2010), the optimum length of educational video clips (Guo, Kim, & Rubin, 2014) best practices for recording lectures (Day, 2008) and effectiveness, teaching methods, design and reflection of video based learning (Yousef, Chatti, & Schroeder, 2014). The research discussed in this paper focuses on ‘video teaching’ which is defined as teaching via video in which the teacher plays an active role, is visible and audible, is recorded, and where the screen presence of the teacher is an important element in the didactic process. Traditionally, teaching has been based on face-toface contact between the teacher and students in a classroom setting and teachers have been trained to teach within this context. Once the relationship transitions from face to face contact, to contact via a digital medium, a new set of teaching skills and didactic approaches are required and this fundamentally challenges the traditional and established role of the lecturer and their relationship to their students. Many of today’s lecturers, who completed their training ten or twenty years ago, have received only limited training on video teaching (Johnson et al., 2014). There are many different types of video formats that exist, each with different features and affordances. Efforts to define and categorise these formats into a logical schema are ongoing (Hansch et al., 2015; Koumi, 2014; Woolfitt, 2015). PROBLEM DOMAIN According to Siemens, Gašević, & Dawson (2015) ‘Education technology has gone through three distinct generations of development and now a fourth is emerging’. This fourth generation includes ‘distributed and digitally shaped technologies: adaptive learning, distributed infrastructures and competency models’. Greater emphasis will be placed on ‘the process of ‘stitching’ together distributed interactions’ with learners who control their preferred toolsets (p. 206). Video in education is one element of those ‘distributed interactions’ and is playing a role within the changing educational landscape. This paper focuses on the challenges facing traditional lecturers in higher education as they encounter the ever increasing possibilities that technology offers them, the impact this has on their teaching and didactic approach, and how they can meet the increasing expectations of today’s technology savvy students. Each development in technology has the potential to impact pedagogical practice and the importance of addressing the lack of adequate technology training combined with the impact of technology is considered an important and current subject of recent academic research (Alsofyani, Aris, & Eynon, 2013; Guo et al., 2014; Schols, 2009; Stover & Veres, 2013). Within a group there are factors that affect the adoption of new technologies, with some adopting it early, and others waiting until technology is used in the mainstream before adopting it (Rogers, 2003). Videoing teaching as an exercise in itself does not automatically result in better student performance. Further steps are needed to incorporate this format effectively into the structure of the course. The concept of ‘flipping the classroom’ (Bishop & Verleger, 2013), which provides lesson content in advance of the class, can result in the lecturer finding that the ‘normal’ content of their class has already been delivered in video form in advance, leaving the lecturer with contact time that needs to be filled. Understanding the consequences of pre-recording lesson content, and the opportunities and challenges this presents, creates possibilities for interactive classroom activities and exercises to engage the students. The current research contributes to this subject by helping lecturers understand the process of video teaching, the subsequent consequences from a didactic perspective, and providing a form of support that will assist them in developing their video teaching. Research context The research was conducted within the tourism team at Inholland University of Applied Sciences, located in Diemen in The Netherlands. The 25 lecturers on the team have academic and teaching backgrounds combined with experience in the tourism industry. After some initial web lectures were recorded by the team in 2010, there was very limited further uptake of this technology. The goal of the research was to gain insight into the support needs of lecturers in the tourism team in order to construct an adequate form of support that will help them develop their video teaching skills. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK The development of video use within higher education was examined through the lens of several didactic theories and models. A search was made for existing examples of material that support lecturers in developing video teaching skills. This search focused on websites of a selection of Research Universities and Universities of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands and abroad. Data was collected from a variety of contemporary academic, professional, industry and nonacademic sources with a focus on peer reviewed articles. The use of video within Higher Education can be examined from within the constructivist theory, which argues that learning occurs when the student is actively involved in the process of constructing relevant knowledge, and the more active the involvement, the more potential there is for learning at a more complex level. ‘The contemporary view of learning is that people construct new knowledge and understandings based on what they already know and believe’ (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000, p.10). Within this context, education can be seen as a form of dialogue at different levels between educator and student (Fransen, 2006; Laurillard, 2002) and the challenge is to find ways to use video in ways that encourage students to be actively involved in the learning process. Any media format, including video, needs to be deployed by lecturers effectively and can be used to support the effectiveness of their teaching. Biggs & Tang (2011) examine the effectiveness of teaching in the theory of constructive alignment, placing the active construction of knowledge within the perspective of constructivist theory, that emphasises alignment to establish correlation between what is taught and what is to be learned and assessed. Hattie (2009) did not find significant increase in effectiveness of teaching through audio/visual methods (television, film, video or slides). However, using interactive video methods could have positive effects on student achievement, but many other environmental variables had to be taken into consideration. Any teaching via video needs to understand, benefit from, and encourage the ‘interactive’ nature of video (Laurillard, 2002). Traditionally, technology (and the associated knowledge) has been taught as a separate ‘silo’ of information than those of ‘pedagogy’ and ‘content’. The (TPACK) Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge model (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) integrates the separate domains of content and pedagogical knowledge, with that of technological knowledge. By integrating these subjects in teacher training, and during teaching, a much deeper, more complex, and enriched understanding of the types of knowledge emerges. Using technology on its own is not necessarily the answer to better learning results and effective teaching. As Kereluik et al. (2013, p. 133) state, in order to have effective teaching, ‘knowing the technology is important, but knowing when and why to use it is more important’ and the TPACK model can help guide this process. There is only so much information that a student can process at a given time and a clear understanding of this is important in order to match the learning capacity to the individual (Colvin Clark & Mayer, 2011). Understanding human cognitive architecture is essential when designing education which incorporates technology and the importance of guidance during student instruction has been outlined. Cognitive load is of specific relevance in the use of video in education. Mayer & Moreno (2003) propose a theory of multimedia learning and suggest nine ways in which cognitive overload can be reduced when teaching through multimedia, in order to ‘use words and pictures to foster meaningful learning’ (P. 43). Colvin Clark & Mayer (2011) recommend that E-learning (which includes video formats) include both words and graphics and