Since September 2014, I have produced numerous flipped classroom lectures for accounting and financial spreadsheet courses in my flipped classroom. Five semesters later – during the spring semester in 2017 – it was time for a change.
Instead of me, my students generated their own flipped classroom lectures for the financial spreadsheet courses. Students producing their videos required a new set of thinking for both the teacher and students. To this end, over 150 videos – generated by me and my students – were originally posted in a YouTube channel operated by Google. All of these videos are then downloaded to my university-wide course management system.
To maximize use of those videos and for assessment purposes, I incorporated a one-point assessment quiz for each video in the course management system. For each semester-long course, my students completed 100 online video quizzes both in and outside of the classroom. Examples of Microsoft Excel topics explained by my students included: auto-fitting, conditional formatting, headings, cell styles, borders, zooming, and date formats. Check out my YouTube channel at mekntid1983.
Related content: How to create accessible video content
Below are 10 tips that will help you, as online educators, develop guidelines for students producing their videos for the benefit of their classmates.
IT: Help is on its way
Develop a relationship with your college’s online learning, information systems, or engineering services department. Introduce yourself in person or in an email to a director of one of those departments. Attend their informational sessions. Become familiar with their websites, if any.
A close relationship with this department will pay off in dividends. They can help you with installing and updating your video capture software. An on-campus cloud account that stores all of the student videos in one place can be implemented by them. They can make access to the cloud account to be available to anyone appropriate. If necessary, they can create subfolders – draft, content and final – for you and each student. Just about anyone in those department from director to the student intern will help you.
In my case, the intern in my college’s online learning department helped me a great deal; he knew his stuff with our video capture software. Those departments are considered “service” departments – meaning that they are there to help faculty and students. Those departments can also help the students with accessibility issues: captioning, photo descriptions and headers, for example.
Syllabus: Inform early
Talk about this student-centered technology project at the start of the academic year. You include this graded curriculum component on your syllabus. Drum up the main benefits of this project: students engaging in technology while teaching others. Explain that you will provide a detailed description of this project and rubric later during the academic term. This ensures no surprise for the students as the academic term progresses along.
Rubric: Students crave feedback!
In my case, each completed student-generated video was worth 30 points. Those 30 points constituted only 2 percent of the entire course grade for the entire semester. It was meant to be a light project, nothing heavy-handed – focusing on critical thinking skills needed for today’s workforce.
My rubric contained the following components: sign media release, attend orientation, select topic, discuss curriculum ideas with instructor, write down notes for your lecture, create content in an Excel worksheet, conduct practice session, record session, create a 5-point assignment for your video, and approve final video.
Once a video was finalized by a student, reviewed by me and accessibility issues resolved, I get the final approval from the student.
Previous videos: Becoming familiar with format
Students benefited from watching several videos that were produced by students in past academic terms. Viewing those videos gives the students a feel for what is expected of them during the completion of this project during the semester.
I encouraged the students to keep the video lengths short. Shorter videos translated to greater motivation toward completion. Watching several good videos will encourage students to ask the instructor follow-up questions. Another bonus of these videos is that it gives the student a feeling of confidence that this can be done.
Topics: Student ownership
Develop a list of potential topics related to the course for the students to choose from. Students like options and/or the opportunity to self-select a relevant and unlisted topic related to the course. My teaching experience in the classroom is such that average students will pick easy topics. That’s okay. If an above-average student selects a too-easy topic, I encouraged the student to select another topic that was more academically appropriate for him or her.
Orientation: Walking through
During the first or second week of the academic term, host a capture video software orientation. Ideally, those orientations should take place in studios that are typically operated by the collegiate online learning department. Have someone from the online learning department walk through the steps with the students observing. A visual and detailed step-by-step handout should be distributed. A student volunteer or two can walk through the entire process hands-on with a computer and its capture video software with the guidance of the IT department employee while the rest of the class observes. Familiarity builds confidence for the students. Attendance is required – a component of the suggested rubric.
Content: Start with a favored interest
To get a jump-start on creating content on a spreadsheet for a selected topic, encourage the student to think about his or her favorite hobby, sport or interest/activity. A student who aspires to be an event planner listed costs associated with party events in a spreadsheet; the student then demonstrated the use of the minimum function involving those listed costs.
Another student enamored with British royalty demonstrated the use of the count function through Excel “counting” the number of English kings since 1800 entered in a spreadsheet.
A third student who loves watching National Football League (NFL) games showed his classmates on how to change themes in a spreadsheet showcasing various NFL team logos in various themes.
Dry runs: Practice, practice, practice
I chat with each student to discuss potential content after topic is selected by the student. I find this aspect – creating content – the most difficult video-related task for most of the students to master. The student is forced to think about teaching and how to create curriculum components to complete a video lesson plan.
After the student shares with me about his or her personal interests, I allow the student time to input data (the less, the better) and undergo many dry runs with an imaginary camera on top of his or her laptop or computer screen in the classroom. Even better is a dry run at the studio supervised by me or an online learning department worker.
Mistakes with delivery or content will be corrected during this dry run process. Depending on confidence with technology and experience with interacting with a video capture software, some students do this quickly and others do not.
Competition: Top students winning prizes
To generate excitement, I created a friendly top-three anonymous vote competition – prizes are given to the top or the top 3 winners during a final examination period. The prizes can be $10 gift cards from Starbucks or Dunkin’. Each student must vote for others and not for the video that he or she made.
The students need to explain the rationale behind his or her votes. Those student responses, also allow a unique opportunity for the instructor to develop an even more detailed (or informal) rubric of videos, such as appearance, looking in the camera, communication, body language, delivery, appropriateness of content, length of video, and real-life applications.
Surveys: Valuing student responses
After student videos are completed, posted, and shared with classmates, create a different survey each academic term. Ask your students if this experience was a positive learning experience or not. Ask them if they recommend that the instructor continues this teaching approach. Inquire if they prefer teacher-generated videos or student-generated videos and the reasons behind their decision. Student survey data and results offer a plethora of action research opportunities for conference presentations/posters and workshop opportunities.
Michael (Mike) Kane, MS Adm and MS SecEd, is a senior lecturer at the Business Studies Department at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) – one of the ten colleges of Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). Kane teaches accounting and financial spreadsheets to deaf and hard of hearing students pursuing associate-level business degrees.
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