Video Assessment for Maths Students

Origin

School of Mathematics, Faculty of Science

Tools used

Contact

Further reading and links

School of Mathematics Re/Play Showcase Channel - a selection of the best student submissions

For further help or advice, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

Background

The Digital Education Office were approached by Nina and Jayne to discuss one of the assessment tasks in their unit 'Perspectives in Mathematics'. This second-year unit aims to use a students’ maths background to develop skills in communication, independent project work and supporting peers in group work.

As part of the assessment on supporting peers in group work Nina and Jayne wanted the students to produce a short video in groups of between 3 and 5.

These would be on one of two themes:

  1. A tutorial resource aimed at 1st year students
  2. A resource aimed at non-mathematicians to help explain a mathematical concept

Objectives for the Digital Education Office

The aim of the unit is to develop communication and career skills and the video element is part of an exercise which helps to meet a number of the ILOs.

Objectives for the video element worked on with the DEO were -

  • Design a workflow for online submission of the video using Blackboard
  • Provide online and face-to-face guidance for the students in the process of producing a video
  • Implement a submission process that would be simple and robust, allowing Jayne and Nina easy access to the submissions
  • The ability to track submissions
  • The option to surface the videos to peers in Blackboard or make open to the public

What was done

The DEO office met with Nina and Jayne to scope out their requirements for the project and gain a high-level overview of how they wanted their students to engage with the video element of the assessed task and how they envisaged they would access and mark the finished videos.

As part of the innovation funding for the extension of the Re/Play project Martin and Pete modelled a submission workflow which utilised Re/play and Blackboard. This was then demonstrated to Nina and Jayne and tweaked based on feedback received.

In order to give the students an online guide to producing videos the DEO team created a video project area in the Blackboard course. This contained three areas -

  • How to submit – including submission link to Re/Play, video resources and written guidance
  • Ideas for practice – examples of similar work created by others, both at UoB and from other sources e.g. Khan Academy
  • Top tips for filming and editing video – including guidance on copyrighted material, managing a video project and considerations for timings when producing a video to a deadline

NB. this is available as a reusable object which can be imported in to any Blackboard course please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk if you would like to discuss using this.

In order to get the students started, Martin and Pete presented the site and talked through the resources on Blackboard during one of the Lectures and provided an open drop in session to assist with any questions.

Outcomes

What worked well

  • The Blackboard course provided the students with the information they needed
  • Submitting to Re/Play reduced the time students would need to spend processing the video file
  • No issues with Playback (in terms of formats) as all encoding handled automatically
  • Sharing of videos in other Blackboard courses was simple and ability to surface on a public showcase channel
  • Easy handling of files as stored in the cloud
  • Full support available as using centrally supported services

"Martin and Pete were amazing.  From our end the whole process was so smooth and easy. All we had to do was talk to the students about the content of the videos as absolutely every technical aspect was handled promptly and effectively by the DEO team." 

Dr Nina Snaith, Reader in Mathematics

Issues and considerations

  • Copyright guidance – clear guidance must be given at the outset. If you are unsure please talk to your subject librarian as part of your planning.
  • Videos uploaded in this way are visible to all students within the course. This is due to the permissions in Re/Play.
  • Important to give clear guidelines on naming convention for video to identify who submitted