Abstract:

In the framework of the adaptation of new degrees to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), the student has to achieve several competences inherent to a degree. Against the background, the idea arose from the difficulties in a virtual learning environment (VLE) to attain the competence Communicate properly, in writing or orally, both mother tongue and foreign language in the academic and professional. How could the students attain the part “communicate orally” in the case of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), a totally online university?

Taking this into account, our objective is to analyse the usefulness for the students of doing an activity by recording the answer on a video instead of writing it down in order to practice and attain this competence in a virtual learning environment (VLE). One of the basic characteristics of UOC is its educative pattern which is based to encourage a range of continuous assessment activities to every subject.

To this end, we created a tool, VideoPAC, which allows the student to make a video privately. We started the pilot with a small group of students and as it worked out well we extended it to the whole subject as well as to other ones of the different learning programs.

Since the pilot, every semester a survey is conducted among students of UOC that use this tool. The answers of the questionnaire show that the students are satisfied with the methodology applied to attain this competence. The results reveal the importance of contextualising and explaining to the students the reasons for recording a video in order to motivate them. Otherwise, they may perceive it as an additional difficulty to pass the subject and don’t hand in the answer of the exercise with the video.

The final conclusions are that this tool allows the students to practice this competence and the teachers to assess it. The students have accepted this methodology and are mostly satisfied with the results, too.

Keywords:

VLE, students, video, competences, motivations, satisfaction.