PhD Blog (dot) Net

A special issue of seminar.net on visual learning in Higher Education has just been published online, featuring a number of contributions from researchers at the Visual Learning Lab (VLL) in the University of Nottingham. Well worth a look.

It’s the first time I’ve come across this open-access online journal, in which contributors are encouraged to record a short video to introduce their papers (several of my fellow student interns filmed the videos for the VLL). Whilst providing a useful summary of each paper (a sort of visual abstract), the videos offer a more informal and personal engagement with the authors. A nice touch.

Two videos have recently appeared on the Web which address the student perspective at the University of Nottingham. Jonathan Kogan and Nic Gilbert’s celebrated Student Learning Experience has amassed over 20,000 hits on YouTube, whilst the slightly less irreverent Student Voice video we made for the Visual Learning Lab (VLL) has been ‘on tour’ in staff workshops around the University. At the most recent of these events, a number of attendees – responding to some of the negative comments on teaching practice described in the video – expressed surprise and a little concern that it was showing on the University YouTube channel. I pointed out that the video had gone through the not inconsiderable vetting processes of both the VLL core team and the University YouTube selection panel, and suggested that showing students actively developing critical perspectives of their own learning experiences might actually be seen as progressive.

Though very different, both these videos can claim to represent an authenticity that is lacking in the slick promotional videos which many universities (including Nottingham) routinely distribute, and I suspect many potential students have become somewhat immune to these. The University are hardly likely to endorse Kogan and Gilbert’s film, but if you search for Nottingham University on YouTube, it’s their video that comes up first, and – at least for a certain demographic – it might be one of the best recruitment tools they have. Take it away boys…

I have embedded this video rush of an interview with Stephen Fry – made as part of the BBC TV series The Virtual Revolution – more for what it represents than for its content. That’s not to say Fry’s typically eloquent defence of the Web is not worth a viewing. But this is, I believe, the first time the BBC have released video content and code in this manner.* This and similar rushes have been released under an international permissive “Share-Alike’ licence (inspired by, but not identical to, the Creative Commons Licence), and form part of an impressive looking Web resource.

Whilst this experimental move is clearly designed to align open-access/code sensibilities with a promotional ecxercise, lets hope it points the way to further commitment in this area.

The video can also be downloaded and comes with a full transcript.

* This service may not be available to users outside the UK.

My role as a student intern with the Visual Learning Lab is drawing to a close in the next couple of months. Last year we conducted a series of focus groups in a number of Schools across the University asking undergraduate students about their learning experiences. In an aim to create a visual and innovative dissemination tool, we decided to summarise key findings in the form of a video, which has now been released on the University of Nottingham YouTube channel.

The video has subsequently been central to a number of interactive workshops we have delivered to teaching staff in participating Schools, and a symposium presentation we gave at the SRHE Postgraduate and Newer Researchers Conference in December.

Following the hugely popular video The Machine is Us/ing Us by Michael Wesch at Kansas State University, the equally hypnotic Information R/evolution explores how Web 2.0 has changed the way we find, create and share information. You can download all Wesch videos here.