Butch de Castro, Associate Professor, Nursing and Health Studies at UW Bothell, shares six tips he used to help students succeed in a group video assignment, which focused on understanding the views and concerns of South Seattle neighborhoods. Salem Lévesque of the UW Bothell Learning Technologies team provided support for his class.
1. Consider class size in developing assignments
Think small—Have students work in teams of 5 or 6 for group assignments to facilitate distribution of effort while allowing for multiple perspectives.
2. Structure the assignment to ensure participation by all students
Each member of a team should be required to contribute at least one clip for a class project. de Castro limited videos to three minutes to keep things manageable.
3. Encourage students to focus on a specific issue
To keep things tight, de Castro told students, “Your job is not to try to capture everything you’ve learned in terms of environmental pollution and human health consequences among at-risk communities, but rather to pick a specific issue.”
4. Explain privacy issues
To respect confidentiality of residents, especially those who might not want to be identified with environmental problems, students didn’t photograph recognizable faces, license plates and addresses. The students didn’t use photo release forms.
5. Provide access to equipment
Students checked out small flip video cameras and tripods from the UW Bothell Information Technologies Circulation Equipment desk. All three campuses provide equipment to their students.
6. Provide basic media training
Keep it basic. This is not a video class. Consider bringing in an expert to help students understand basic videography techniques, including basic video editing training.
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This article was originally published on November 2014 as part of a UW Provost report on trends and issues in public higher education.
