Abstract:

Videos are being used in classes to diversify the communication, motivate the learner and show concepts and theory in different and attractive ways. The use of the sound, movement, colour and different landscapes can increase the learning ability of the student and is becoming an increasingly important classroom tool. Nevertheless, when videos are suggested to be seen outside the classroom the learning result is smaller, and many students just don’t feel enough motivation for it.

This article reports the results of student made videos in higher education in curricular units of physics and about biosensors that are not related to video. In both cases some of the regular work for evaluation was proposed to be replaced by a video, made by students in team work.

In the biosensor’s curricular unit, the challenge was to make a small video to disseminate the contents of a scientific article to the young non-scientific community. Students accepted the challenge, searched for videos with the same goal with increasing motivation and critical thinking. They had to use some creativity and problem solving to design, produce and edit their work, increasing their communication competences. Finally, they had a chance to show, see, comment and evaluate their colleagues’ videos, to discuss main problems and solutions found.

In the physics curricular unit, the challenge was to illustrate one of the issues of the program in a short video, telling a story. Students had to choose the theme, to fill in a form where they stated the parts of the story, the beginning, development and the end, like in a small storyboard. They had to film and produce the video and finally they had to reflect and answer to the question of: “what they have learned”. Students accepted the challenge and got motivate to produce their own video. During the classes some examples of videos were shown or simply mentioned, in relation to the curriculum that was being lectured. Students were more motivated to see them and more critical about what they were seeing. Students used their mobile phones to film and open source editor to produce the small videos, no special help was needed, and they were able to solve the associated problems with creativity. Finally, the videos were shown to the entire class, were discussed by the teacher and the colleagues, students gave their classification for all the videos, increasing their critical thinking, and a podium was prepared for the best ones.

In the article some examples and data will be presented about the way students acted during this video challenge.

Keywords:

Videos, communication, learning, motivation.