Abstract:

This case study describes the use of video presentations in the “Animal Breeding” course of the Veterinary Sciences Degree as an alternative to traditional, classroom face-to-face delivery of a technical writing assignment about an official breeding program of a Spanish domestic species. This assignment, supervised by a teacher, contributes to the final grade of the course. It includes a summary, a critical analysis of the current results of the breeding programme, and the presentation of the assignment to the rest of the students. The course assignment used to be suggested as a group work but due to the COVID-19 pandemics, the assignment is performed individually since 2020. Regarding the classical face-to-face delivery, during the lockdown situation in 2020, the written piece of work was the only task considered, whereas in the academic course 2020-21, the teaching team proposed two options for presenting: a face-to-face oral delivery or delivery of pre-recorded video presentations. In any case, the advised time for each of the individual presentations was five minutes. Microsoft Power Point, which is used as visual support in the traditional oral presentations, was also suggested as a practical tool for video recording. From the total 109 individual assignments presented, 66 (61%) were offered as pre-recorded video presentations and 43 (39%) were oral presentations. In general, the students showed a high level of competences to present their assignment by video recording, and the ability to adapt their communications skills to the video format. In both formats, live questions and answers at the end of the presentation gave the opportunity to the presenter student and the participating audience to discuss different aspects of interest related to the targeted breeding programme. At the end of the course, a short voluntary survey with questions related to the type of assignment delivery was conducted. From the 31 responses obtained, the teaching team gained information about the students´ main reasons to select between the two types of presentations, and about their preferences on the type of presentations from the other students. Globally, our case study shows that video-recording delivery of written assignments may be useful to support high education students’ learning not only in exceptional situations like lockdown, but also as a basic or complementary approach to traditional oral presentations. This can be of particular interest in certain circumstances, such as courses with time constrains, or in the case of students with limited confidence in their communication skills.

Keywords:

Higher eduction assignments, pandemics, oral presentation, video-recording, communication skills.