Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier Volume 3 (1) Winter 2015 Ruari Elkington and Peter Schembri Queensland University of Technology
Those who teach film and media need to use screen content to illustrate their subjects. For example, students want illustrations to accompany lectures on film or television genres. Our experience has been that student access to the film and television screen content underpinning a study of genres is not only desirable but is, in fact, crucial for effective teaching and learning outcomes. Not so long ago, a screening during or at the completion of a lecture was the expected method by which educators delivered screen content to illustrate their teaching. Even if student attendance fluctuated from week to week a quick head count confirmed that a certain number of students were physically present. It was assumed that this physical attendance encouraged students to reflect upon and contextualize the material post lecture. While simply attending a lecture will not translate into actual student learning, it does demonstrate a willingness by students to engage with the course content by making a commitment to attend a scheduled and recurring lecture and screening program.
However, as flipped classroom models gain acceptance in educational institutions, this traditional lecture-screening model is giving way to online, off-site, and student-controlled mechanisms for screen content delivery and viewing. Nevertheless, care should be taken when assessing how online delivery translates into student engagement and learning. As Junco (2012) points out, “it’s not the technology that generates learning, but the ways in which the technology are used.”
Discussed, debated, and embraced to varying degrees by educators, there remains no definitive model for the flipped classroom – although many models involve ‘flipping’ content and knowledge acquisition (including viewing films and television shows) from scheduled on-campus classes to online material viewed by students in advance of an on-campus lecture or class. The classroom or tutorial room then becomes a space to problem-solve, engage in collaborate learning, and advance and explain concepts. From an institutional perspective, the flipped classroom model could deliver an additional benefit beyond immediate pedagogical concerns. Tucker (2012) suggests through the flipped classroom model “all aspects of instruction can be rethought to best maximize the scarcest learning resource — time.” The narrative most often associated with this shift is that the move to online content delivery of lecture and cinematic / televisual material may also provide educators with more time to do other work such as engage in research, plan strategies to empower students.
Experimentation with the flipped classroom model is playing out in various educational institutions. Yet several core concerns remain — one of these concerns is the crucial question of whether an online/digital flipped approach is more effective for student engagement and learning than the traditional lecture-screening mode for screen content delivery. Some urge caution in this regard, arguing that “new technology isn’t always supported by change management and professional development to ensure that digital isn’t just a goal within itself, but actually helps to transform education” (Fleming cited in Blain 2014). The most fundamental concern remains how do lecturers, instructors, and tutors know students have watched the films and television shows associated with a subject? The remainder of this discussion deals with these concerns, and possible solutions offered, through an analysis of the Film, Television and Screen Genres subject at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Queensland.
The Flip for Film, Television and Screen Genres at QUT
In 2014 lecturers, tutors, and instructors in a number of film and television subjects were encouraged to shift from a teacher-centred approach to a facilitator-led approach. In the case of Film, TV, and Screen Genres, this revised pedagogy was introduced in the subject over ten weeks of lectures and nine weeks of tutorial classes. Underpinning this new approach was the notion that teaching staff should recognize and instruct students as ‘adult’ learners. This meant students needed to accept responsibility to access and view films and television episodes outside of scheduled classes, thereby contributing to their own knowledge acquisition. It was not a prerequisite for students taking the first year introductory Genres subject to have had previous film or television experience.
Screen Content Delivery and Access
In regards to screen content delivery several significant changes occurred:
- Instead of screening whole films or single TV episodes, excerpts were shown in lectures. A list of excerpted titles was released at the start of the semester.
- As adult learners, students were expected to access and view the complete film or TV episode outside of class.
- These films and TV shows were made available through a range of online streaming media platforms and providers such as Kanopy, YouTube, and Vimeo, as well as via QUT’s Media Warehouse (the internal University media repository).
- Attendance at lectures and tutorial classes became non-compulsory.
- Tutorial classes on a lecture topic (usually a specific genre) would occur the week following the lecture. Prior to the tutorial, students were expected to access complete films or television episodes.
Temporal and physical delivery shifted from a ‘top down’ lecture (‘sage on the stage’) mode to a ‘guide on the side’ facilitator approach (King 1993). This necessitated reconsidering how students engage with a film and television ‘theory’ subject where no screen productions were made by these students. In the pre-2014 model the subject was conventionally delivered through a series of lectures, followed by screening a film or television episode in its entirety, these texts were then unpacked through group work in the following week’s tutorial classes. Under this model, during tutorials students were active participants, engaging in and discussing the same screen content – content that was mandatory for all students to watch. This active participation and engagement tended not to occur in the new flipped and facilitator-led approach.
Possible Solutions
A weekly quiz on required screen content was a feature of an earlier iteration of the Genres subject. This quiz was printed on paper, to be completed in-class by students. Student feedback on these quizzes was not positive: the Genres teaching team was informed by QUT learning advisors that a ‘quiz culture’ did not exist amongst film and TV production students. However a more engaging quiz delivery may lead to greater student engagement and participation. Possible approaches could include:
- Shorter, weekly online quizzes, with results followed up in tutorials. Online quizzes could be delivered through software such as GoSoapbox. Further investigation is needed to determine if GoSoapbox provides instructors with feedback on individual students, or as an aggregate.
- Online quizzes could be delivered through an existing Learning Management System such as Blackboard (the LMS employed by QUT). The Blackboard LMS currently offers a quiz facility, although its functionality may need to be examined in order to prevent students sharing answers to quiz questions presenting inaccurate data on individual student achievement.
- Offering the most potential for student engagement through quizzes, alongside the highest barrier to entry for educators due software/hardware requirements, is technology such as Keepad and its TurningPoint This technology includes physical keypads distributed in class which can be assigned to specific students to track their progress on digital multiple choice quizzes in a “live” setting. QUT has access to this technology and this option may be trialled in 2015.
Potentially the quiz would address a range of pedagogical concerns encompassing individual student access (did they watch it?) and their deeper engagement with the text (did they understand it?). However, for these efforts be worthwhile student participation, and student attendance, would ideally be an assessable component of the subject. The live setting and physical keypads removes potential student sharing of answers which can skew results for the online quizzes and has potential for increased tutorial attendance and engagement.
Conclusion
The move towards a facilitator mode of instruction occurred within the context of a university-wide discourse claiming that contemporary students desired less classroom instruction. Claims were made at an institutional level that students were keen to access screen content and lectures online. Online engagement would motivate students to take an active role in their own learning. The experience in the Genres subject was that higher achieving students were indeed motivated and predisposed to working independently. However, students who required more support or who were less familiar with the basics of film and television language preferred more in-class interaction with their instructors.
As adult learners, students were expected to view prescribed film and TV content out of class; this expectation was clearly indicated to students as being a part of their workload in the subject although students currently cannot be “marked down” for not viewing the prescribed content. With in-class screenings removed, accessing and viewing the crucial screen content underpinning the subject was now the responsibility of the student. It soon became apparent that both teaching staff and students were concerned about accessing screen content and support material. Whether students did in fact access screen content became an on-going concern for tutors.
Despite a reasonable spread of grades at the end of the semester, lecturers and tutors were always uncertain if their students had watched the prescribed films and TV shows. Although several possible quiz based solutions have been proposed, the question facing educators using a flipped model is how to effectively ascertain if students have accessed screen content. In the ideal flipped scenario, students, having watched the screen content in their own time, arrive in tutorials primed for discussion. In practice, the lack of accountability around student access to screen content, coupled with the absence of an effective way for tutors to track those students who had accessed the screen content, led at times to a severe mismatch in tutor expectations and student engagement. Should instructors simply have to live with this uncertainty? Or, will the same technology facilitating online, off-site delivery of screen content evolve to also allow educators to ascertain whether the crucial content underpinning their teaching is actually being viewed?
References
Georgia Blain. “The New Classroom.” Screenrights, https://www.screenrights.org/news/2014/04/the-new-classroom-0.
Junco, Reynol. “Most Ed-Tech Startups Suck! Here’s Where They’re Going Wrong.”, (2012). http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/28/most-ed-tech-startups-suck-heres-where-theyre-going-wrong/#eluXCpGqxFb7EKcd.99.
King, Alison. “From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side.” College teaching 41, no. 1 (1993): 30-35.
Tucker, Bill. “The Flipped Classroom.” Education Next 12, no. 1 (2012): 82-83.
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