Abstract:

TOVID an Erasmus+ funded project, addresses an unmet need – relevant, practical, continuing education accessible via digital video. TOVID addresses learning solutions by providing innovative, digital videos of high-quality content to faculty and staff at Universities in Malta, Finland, Cyprus and Slovenia, industry partners, hospitals, and an NGO. Three video series: Get Ready, Get Started, and Get Online Teaching Tips were designed, delivered and evaluated to increase learner motivation, competencies, a learning community, and a website http://tovid.eu/ to further distribute the programs. Evaluating the resources enabled understanding of the value of video series and mobile learning in digital education. A mixed method design involving quantitative surveys and qualitative focus group interviews obtained a full understanding of the interventions. The videos were emailed to academic staff at participating universities and staff with the industry partners. Learners completed a survey after watching the videos. Follow-up focus groups were held with each organization. Preliminary findings suggest delivering continuing education via videos had positive results for engaging learners and learner knowledge retention. Findings showed that the videos generated new thinking with regard to online education, the resources both increased participant digital education readiness and competence, and produced innovative, long-lasting resources to facilitate educator’s digital capacity. Findings also provided suggestions on how to improve the videos. The video education series not only involved educators as consumers of eLearning, but as digital creators as they developed scripts and shared teaching tips with colleagues. Learning with and from one another reduced the learning curve, costs and time to diffuse innovation and change and met the need of educators to adopt innovative approaches and digital technologies in teaching.

Keywords:

Education, video pedagogy, educational technology, research project.