ONLINE TEACHING RESOURCES: EDUCATIONAL VIDEOS AS A TOOL IN VIRTUAL TEACHING

The new teaching and learning methodologies have allowed the university teacher specialized in vision science to develop some activities in which the student’s attendance is not required. This promotes the autonomous learning of a significant part of the program, although a fully on-line teaching is not possible for some knowledge areas. Our research group has recently developed some laboratory materials based on video recordings, which are a significant innovation for teaching methodologies applicable to studies where a high percentage of attendance is required.
Some practical skills which require the use of a particular technology or specific measurement technique can be shown and explained to the student by means of video recordings. Thus, the student can acquire some knowledge on a specific practice before going to the laboratory and perform it. This allows the student to know the devices he/she is going to use in a practical session as well as the measurement procedures to follow which shortens the time required for presential taks.

Part of the developed videos consists of recording the experimental performance of practices in our laboratories, with indications of the steps to follow, the mode of use of the materials and the data that should considered. Furthermore, the videos also include the necessary calculations that the student will have to perform using a spreadsheet once the data are acquired and entered into the database. These videos are a complement of the practice written guide. At the same time, a short questionnaire is attached to be answered by the student with the aim of ascertaining the level of understanding of the practice acquired by the student after viewing the video. Another part of the material consists of video recording of a power-point presentation with a teacher speech explaining various psychophysical methods of measurement used with real patients. The measurement protocol and instructions that the patient receives determine in some manner the results of the psychophysical measure. It is crucial that students acquire adequate habits when performing a measurement as well as a complete knowledge on the different methods that can be performed. As in visual perception experiments stimuli usually appear in a computer screen, a direct recording of the practice performance is not possible. A presentation with screenshots and simulation using graphics can solve this problem.
This material should be always complementary to the written guide of the practice or theoretical notes, which are provided to the student via the university intranet. All videos have been distributed through the platform RUA (Repository of the University of Alicante), which is an open access public source.

Statistics of visits and downloads of these educational resources demonstrate the high acceptance not only in our university but also by external university institutions. In addition, we have found that the time required for the performance of the practical sessions has been reduced significantly, allowing the teacher to deepen in other areas of the subject.