Abstract:

Current university teaching, like teaching at other educational levels, must confront a pressing problem in the classroom: lack of motivation and engagement.

One way for improving is the use of videos in teaching. Today's students have been born and growth in the digital age and for them the videos are part of their daily reality, along with social networks and the Internet in general. Thanks to the videos, the possibility of reaching students in a much more direct way than the traditional master class can be a very interesting way to improve their attention and participation.

On this way, the preparation of videos was the beginning of the didactic strategy called Flipped Classroom. In 2008, two Chemistry teachers from a high school institute in the United States began preparing videos for students who could not attend class. The acceptance was so good that they decided to extend the experience to the rest of the students, using videos so that the students worked at home concepts which later in class were consolidated and expanded.

This work analyzes the possibilities that video has in current university teaching. In addition, some practical examples have been performed. Specifically, the creation of videos has been used through two action ways. On one hand, the creation of videos has been used to replace the master class and improve the attention of students. And, on the other hand, videos have been used as work at home for students to prepare face-to-face sessions in the classroom.

In the first case, two videos were recorded replacing a face-to-face master class of one hour. The videos showed the same content as the traditional lecture. The Screencast-o-matic application was used, which allows screen capture while recording the teacher's voice. The recording was made with the same presentation of the PowerPoint slides that the teacher would show in the classroom, while simultaneously recording the explanations voice. The slides are the same ones that the teacher has provided as the notes of the subject. The videos were uploaded to the YouTube platform. The videos were watched in class, according to the planned schedule, so that all students had a computer and headphones. The students appeared very concentrated almost all the time of the class and showed great interest.

In second case, several videos have been recorded for students´ homework, with the aim of preparing subsequent face-to-face classes of practical type. Each video contained an introduction to the corresponding planned practical activity, as well as different explanations related to it. It is a way for students, before the face-to-face practical class, to be prepared and maintain an adequate level of introduction to what they are going to work on. That allows them to be more focused to and engaged with the activities to be carried out.

The videos were therefore available to students from anywhere, with any device and at any time, especially for the final exam. Surveys were completed at the end of the semester and most of the students considered the experiences as interesting.

The experiences were very satisfactory: in the substitute video of the master class almost all the students were concentrated in class practically all the time. In the case of practical activities, students arrived at the classes with adequate prior knowledge, which allowed an improvement in the dynamics of class work and a better attention, participation and assimilation of activities.

Keywords:

Video, Flipped Classroom, traditional lecture, ubiquitous learning.