Visual Technologies and Their Assessment in Undergraduate Teaching and Learning

C-SAP FINDINGS

VISUAL TECHNOLOGIES AND THEIR ASSESSMENT IN UNDERGRADUATE TEACHING AND LEARNING

Key words: Video, CD-Rom, Assessment

Discipline: Anthropology

Project Leader: Felicia Hughes-Freeland

Project Participants: Felicia Hughes-Freeland, Margaret Kenna

Summary

The project developed means of diversifying methods for teaching, learning and assessment at undergraduate level. Students participated in the design of assessment criteria, and submitted 39 CD-ROMs (for the History of Anthropological Theory) and 8 visual ethnographies on video ( for Visual Anthropology).

Activities

There were two stages: planning and design by the two project participants, and implementation with the participation of the students. We used funds from the UWS Teaching Innovation Fund for tutorial support to facilitate both stages. We also used Blackboard to support each module and others throughout the year.

During Teaching Block 1 we planned and designed the schedule and logistics of the practical teaching and learning. The project was aimed at developing assessment strategies, but it was necessary to develop simple and effective means to provide adequate training. After a lengthy process we successfully negotiated facilities with the university and found staff to provide training in scanning and editing over the period February to April: a postgraduate, and a freelance news cameraman. Researching the design was a challenge due to a shortage of existing guidelines. The booklet on ‘portfolios’ from the Generic Learning Centre had been helpful in devising the hard-copy portfolio used previously as a means of assessment, but there did not seem to be any resource which suggested ways of tackling using the CD-ROM as a learning device, or ways of assessing it. Criteria for assessing video work are limited to university courses such as Manchester’s MA in Visual Anthropology, and guidelines provided for selecting ethnographic films at festivals. It was also necessary to revise existing module outlines and process paperwork with Quality Committees.

Both modules were taught in Teaching Block 2. The 50 minute ‘scanning training’ session was deemed equivalent to a 1,000 word piece of ‘formative coursework’ for the module, hence students did not feel that they were having to do more for this module than for others. The scanning training went extremely well with 100% attendance, and the tutor found time in 50 minutes to introduce the students to Power Point, which some were able to use in the CD-ROMs. The trainer kept weekly ‘Surgery Hours’ and offered ‘Emergency Surgeries’ in the week before work was due. Video editing training started in the fourth week after all the students had filmed a basic exercise and received detailed feedback. Working in the same groups, they filmed and logged 30 minutes max of material, and were taught in one hour to capture and cut short films of 5 minutes; in future it should be two hours. These exercises were debriefed in a seminar with the editing tutor present. For the final projects, student teams (of two, and in one case, three, initially) had access to three cameras over three weeks and tutorial help for two half days per team over two weeks. They were required to film 60 minutes of rushes, which they had to cut into films of not more than 10 minutes. The process was very compressed, with no time for feedback on rough cuts. All guidance was from the tutor, and the lecturer refrained in the name of fairness from seeing the work until it was finished.

For both parts of the project we researched and designed documentation for discussion with the students. Time was set aside for consulting the students taking the modules to discuss and determine assessment criteria. For the CD-ROMs, they were grouped in twos and threes, and asked to discuss what criteria they felt were most appropriate, having been provided with the ‘bench-marking’ criteria for Anthropology, and the Learning Outcomes for the module for level 2 and level 3. In Visual Anthropology two one-hour seminars were dedicated to assessment and took the form of focus groups. Discussion documents were provided, as well as the discipline-specific documentation used for the CD-ROM group. For the Visual Anthropology students, the main points of concern were the balance of marks between the video and the reflexive report (which together formed 50% of the module assessment), and how anthropological relevance should be assessed. The group decided on a 50/50 balance of marks, and an assessment of anthropological relevance limited to the written report. The process of assessment involved reading the reports, seeing the films with the students as a group, then re-viewing the films and re-reading the reports. Both the second marker (who followed a similar procedure alone) and the external were asked to view all eight films.

In neither case did the students support formal peer-assessment, nor did the technical trainers contribute to formal assessment. We did however ask for informal technical feedback in both modules.

Outcomes

For both modules, standard feedback report forms for assessed work were amended on the basis of student recommendations. For the CD-ROMs for TheHistory of Anthropological Theory, Content and Structure were deemed the two most important criteria of evaluation (35% each), then Technical Competence (20%) and Written Expression least (10%), at both level 3 and level 2. For Visual Anthropology a different form had to be constructed. In Visual Anthropology, students proved reluctant to trust to their image production, and opted for a 50-50 balance of marks between the video and the reflexive report. Ironically, everyone would have gained higher marks if the original proposal of 65% for the film and 35% for the report had been followed. Once the marks are finalized, students will be given a final chance to give feedback to finalize recommendations for future practice.

In TheHistory of Anthropological Theory, 24 level 3 students and 15 level 2 students produced CD-ROMs, 39 in all. All demonstrated a basic technical competence in scanning, and some displayed very high levels of technical proficiency in design and presentation. Topics included original research into a distant relative from Victorian times who had published an ethnographic survey of a part of India, using family documents and other memorabilia, early explorers (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Isabella Bird, and Mary Kingsley), expeditions (Torres Straits, Jesup North Pacific, Lewis and Clark), and the early ethnographic filmmaker, Robert Flaherty (this by students also doing Visual Anthropology). A sample of work was marked by both project participants. Highest marks were gained by those students who devised labelled ‘pathways’ through the material, and evaluated its usefulness for other users (the Content and Structure criteria). It was clear that, apart from technical competence in scanning and, in some cases employing Power Point, students had acquired valuable skills in structuring the presentation of such materials in a logical and ‘user-friendly’ way.

In Visual Anthropology, 15 students worked in 7 teams (and eventually 8), to research and produced ‘portraits’ of persons or places in and around Swansea. The topics included a family sportswear business, a man who swims everyday in the Bristol Channel, a circus-skills training session, school visits to the University’s Egypt Centre (a reflection of a joint honours Anthropology and Egyptology student doing the module), an art class, skateboarding, a woman working for SUSTANS, and anti-war demonstrations. All films were assessed in the class of 2.1 and upwards, but some of the reports did not show such a high level of attention, so some marks were pulled down.

In the case of Visual Anthropology there was an extra outcome. Six Swansea students, three of whom had done the module, participated in a field school organised out of the University of Glamorgan. The project convenor acted as Assistance Director of the School and Director of the visual project, which aims to produce a 25 minute video. She ran an initial training day, and the three Swansea students acted as tutors, with ongoing responsibility to oversee filming practice for the rest of the field school. A viewing of 10 hours of rushes at the end of the school showed what an excellent job they had done, so they were well able to transfer their skills. We are currently expecting the film to be edited in Swansea by two students who participated on the field school and another visual anthropology student; of the three, two did the visual anthropology module, and will train the third student who didn’t.

Implications

I begin with the comments from our external examiner, Dr Garry Marvin:

‘Two areas that are new to me this year deserve the highest praise - the production of CD ROMs for the History of Anthropological Theory and the video films for Visual Anthropology. In both of these courses the students have been encouraged to use their

imagination and skills to produce truly original work rather than repeating and commenting on the work of other anthropologists. Obviously a huge amount of thought and effort has gone into the planning of these courses and, within the limited resources

available, great effort has been made to provide the students with the necessary training to produce their CD ROMS and videos. I am afraid that I am someone whose eyes usually glaze over at the mention of ‘transferable skills’ but in these two courses there

really are genuine and significant transferable skills. The ability to design a project on CD ROM with all the necessary research into web resources, the creative use of graphics and the hyperlinks etc and the skills of visual production in terms of design, filming and

editing are skills that will certainly have a potential use outside the academic world. These two courses successfully bring new media into productive contact with academic anthropology and constitute a most valuable addition to the range of anthropology

on offer at Swansea. Such courses inevitably require considerable resourcing and I hope that the University will consider the possibility of offering more funding to allow their further development.’

The students were challenged and although there were steep learning curves in both cases, there was general enthusiasm about the opportunities to use these new methods as part of an academic curriculum (some student comments may be found in the appendices).

There were practical problems in ‘embedding’ these practices, as the Library and Information Services section of University of Wales Swansea cannot at present support specialist IT undergraduate training in scanning and editing software. In terms of sustainability, resources will be needed each time the modules are taught to fund this training. Access to the faculty IT room would also be crucial for scanning training. As far as video editing is concerned, the university’s stand-alone ‘Purple’ system will be available and operates very reliably and to a high standard. For the future, to open up the video training to a wider number of students at different level, it would be necessary to find resources for editing software that could be used in a newly opened self-study computer laboratory. The cost of access however would be a loss of reliability.

To promote best practice in our institution, we intend to hold a School seminar about the C-SAP project in the hope of encouraging colleagues in using visual technologies and assessment in their own module topics. A version of this report will also go to the UWS Teaching Innovation Committee that matched C-SAP funds for this project. The University’s Learning and Teaching Committee is also aware of this project and its potential, and will be presented with a copy of this report.

In the long term we need to consider how these two sets of skills fit into the wider skills training platform provided by universities, and how much priority they should be given. If more information-delivery can be done through Blackboard, space for a module could be made available. In the meantime, Blackboard usage by students and staff is patchy. Institutional support for basic staff training is good, but there is no institutional support whatsoever to assist with packaging and transferring course material to Blackboard.

A final comment is that visual assessment cannot be essentialized any more than ‘written assessment’ can. Assessment criteria have to be associated with the overall learning outcomes and skill acquisition for the module, as well as reflecting disciplinary benchmarking criteria and standards.

Resources

• Course outlines.
• Basic technical instructions.
• Marking sheets summarising the relevant assessment criteria.
• Website to include some of the above, and samples of work from the 39 CD-ROMs and 8 videos, subject to copyright and other ethical considerations.
• References to the project as an example of how images can be used in teaching in the concluding chapter of Working Images, a book in the EASA series (edited by Sarah Pink, Laszlo Kurti and Ana Isabel) to be published by Routledge in 2004; the website for this chapter will hopefully be linked to the project site.
• The project will be central to a presentation at the panel ‘Post observational cinema – again’ at the ASA Decennial, ‘Anthropology and Science’ at Manchester July 14-18 2003, and may be published.
• The film from the field school will also be distributed.
• Some publications about the collaboration with the Glamorgan field school and its relationship to the visual project are expected.
• A field school website is in development and should become available during the summer (to be announced in C-SAP news).
• The seminar presentation at UWS might also be published, possibly in Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences.
• We are considering the feasibility of packaging some of the CD ROMs onto a CD ROM for distribution to every Anthropology Department in Britain.

Appendices

• Module outlines
• Marking criteria and mark sheet
• Handouts from scanning training
• Handout for starting up digital editing using Purple
• Student comments from module evaluations
• Breakdown of results

Felicia Hughes-Freeland

30 June 2003

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