C atherine W. Shoulders could tell that her students were struggling with the semester-long assignment that forms the core of her graduate-level course on research methods. They had to learn about 20 types of research designs and propose topics for each one. But they often ran into trouble or veered off track.
Ms. Shoulders, an associate professor in the department of agricultural education, communications, and technology at the University of Arkansas, had tried providing them with written feedback and meeting with them in person to talk through their difficulties. But those efforts didn’t always help. Besides, she says, “the meetings took forever.”
So, three years ago, she tried something new: When she reviewed each student’s work, she recorded herself on video and shared it with them.
The experiment paid off. She saved time. Her students could watch the videos over and over, and their work improved.
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But something more profound happened as well. Ms. Shoulders’s videos make her thought process visible to students. By sharing her impromptu, contemporaneous impressions of their work, she shows them what intellectual work can look like — that it’s not about the end product but about a continual process of thinking, reflecting, and revising. Valuing that process is an emphasis she traces back to her doctoral adviser and mentor, Brian Myers.
Written comments, which are often edited and polished to arrive at a set of neat conclusions, can be only so effective. When she shows her responses on video, the professor says, students can “see that researchers don’t go ‘Poof’ and have the final answer. It’s a thought process. Even experienced researchers weigh their options.”
T he videos are fairly simple productions. Ms. Shoulders records most of them on her computer, using a program called Kaltura.
In an example that she shared with a reporter, most of the screen was taken up by an image of a “mind map” the student had done on presentation software called Prezi.
The first thing the professor looked at was her student’s overarching research question: “How does a multicultural environment impact student learning in a business classroom?” The assignment was designed to have students — who come from social-science programs in the College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences — explore facets of their question through quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research, such as single-subject, ethnography, and exploratory studies.
Once they finish developing 20 study proposals on the question, the students will have the basis of their master’s thesis and, if they pursue further graduate study, a potential research agenda for the next five to 10 years.
This student’s research question, however, was too narrow to generate multiple analyses. “OK,” Ms. Shoulders said, “what I’m seeing here is, uh, it’s really actually one study. I could answer this with one study,” she said, drawing out the word “one” as she chose her words. “You want to take this to a bit of a larger scope.”
She suggested reframing the question to make it larger in scope, riffing on a few possibilities. That portion of the video lasted just about a minute but had covered essential ground.
She toggled from one circle of the mind map to the next. Each one showed a type of research design along with its corresponding question, with lines pointing to the variables and samples. The responses came quickly and off the cuff. By recording her initial reactions instead of rehearsing her comments, she says, her students see that “I don’t have one right answer and it falls into place.”
Sometimes this approach means that she sorts out her thinking on camera. She’ll offer praise and encouragement where appropriate (“Perfect!”), constructive comments (“I’m excited to see how that’s going to come out in your purpose and objectives”), or what she’s still puzzling through (“I think that’s where you’re going; I could be wrong”).
This video lasted 14 minutes, though the typical length is usually three to 11 minutes. The time can add up. Her course enrolls 35 to 50 students, half who attend in person on the campus, in Fayetteville, and half who take the course online. Each student completes nine assignments, and so she might end up recording as many as 450 of these videos during the semester.
But that’s the nature of the course. “One way or another I’ve got to provide that feedback,” she says. “This is the most efficient way to do so.”
I n their course evaluations, students make a point of describing how much they appreciate the video commentary, Ms. Shoulders says. But that’s not how every student sees it at first.
Hailey R. Gates, who is in the second year of a master’s program in agricultural and extension education, felt frustrated when she received her first video. Instead of providing a clear yes or no, she says, Ms. Shoulders was “hemming and hawing” and asking questions. It knocked the student on her heels.
But in time, Ms. Gates understood that there was a larger message. “Your research is a process,” she says, “not something you work on one day, you get a grade on, and you’re done.” Instead, she has seen that the nature of doing research is “rolling over a problem multiple times instead of getting the one right answer and moving on.”
As effective as her use of video has been, Ms. Shoulders thinks its applications are limited. It’s most appropriate for courses in which a professor needs to give detailed responses, the assignment is multifaceted, long-lasting, and complicated, and the students are struggling. Otherwise, it would be a lot of work for little added benefit.
But if you find yourself writing “see me” or “this needs work” on many assignments, she says, then maybe it’s time to consider using video feedback.
“I don’t want to use an innovation because it’s innovative,” the professor says, “but because it’s helpful.”
Dan Berrett writes about teaching, learning, the curriculum, and educational quality. Follow him on Twitter @danberrett, or write to him at dan.berrett@chronicle.com.
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