Abstract:

Providers of modern education must be able to cope with many new challenges. These include the demand for increasing flexibility and for more individualistic learning methods that pay attention to the life situation of the student. Teaching organized on the principles of blended teaching is a trend that is becoming more and more widespread also in relation to higher education. A workable solution in transforming teaching to make it accord with the blended model is the use of video technologies in teaching. Videos can be employed in various ways to create educational diversity. They can have, for example, the form of short video clips to complement face-to-face teaching. For the sake of flexibility, however, it is beneficial to record all teaching in video and offer it as an alternative to face-to-face teaching of students. Providing all teaching in the form of videos enables the realization of a so-called ubiquitous learning environment. In that kind of ubiquitous learning environment, studying is possible anywhere and anytime, solely with lecture videos.

If the aim is that lecture videos should bring more flexibility to an entire degree program and to create a ubiquitous learning environment, the production should cover all educational provision and not only individual lectures or courses. An obvious alternative is to produce lecture videos directly from face-to-face teaching situations. Even though this poses challenges to the production, it is, however, above all a cost-efficient solution in cases where the intention is nevertheless to hold on to face-to-face teaching. Preserving face-to-face teaching alongside videos makes it possible for example the selection of the participation mode among face-to-face learning, real-time video transmissions and on-demand videos. The challenge for extensive production is its adaptation to different spaces and teaching situations. There is also the challenge of keeping the practices associated with quality production cost-efficient when the intention is that video production should cover an entire degree program.

Kokkola University Consortium Chydenius has produced and utilized videos for quite a long time for its mathematical information technology education. The videos are produced from face-to-face teaching situations and offered both as real-time and on-demand videos to students. Thanks to the long-term activities focused on videos, the implementer of the education has been able to form a clear picture of the costs of lecture videos produced in connection with face-to-face teaching and of the effects of their use. This paper focuses on describing the practice that has developed in connection with the production and utilization of lecture videos for the master's degree education in information technology. The paper gives an overview of the practice, and the main solutions pertaining to it, including the role of the learning manage system, are presented. The paper also describes the CinetCampus video distribution system developed in connection with the degree program. The system enables interaction and group-forming when studying with the help of videos and eases user management related to videos.

Keywords:

Lecture videos, blended learning, ubiquitous learning environment.