Context

For large modules taught within the College of Engineering at Swansea University such as the level 1 module Scientific & Engineering Skills (EG168) and Engineering Analysis (EG189/190), it is a considerable challenge for the lecturer(s) to develop a meaningful relationship with students. Lecture cohorts on these modules are large (250+ students) and examples are delivered through smaller classes (~50 students) and laboratory sessions by supplementary lecturers and/or postdoctoral researchers. This inevitably leads to a certain lack of continuity with regards to students’ contact with the lecturer. It also places a significant pressure on ‘office hours’ and email. For students to learn most effectively, they need to feel involved and engaged in the learning process. This is difficult to achieve whilst delivering generic lecture content to large cohorts. Large lecture groups inevitably leaves students feeling like they are simply being thrown information and engagement with the lecturer or other students studying in the same group is limited. Also, large lecture groups often leave students without an opportunity to provide meaningful feedback for the lecturer. This often results in a teaching environment restricted to ‘lecture and tutorial. This project aimed to go some way towards tackling each of these three issues 1) developing a sense of involvement in the learning process 2) creating and engaging with discipline-specific examples 3) enabling real time feedback As an aside, it was hoped that this teaching approach would lead to a reduction in overloaded office hours and repetitive emails through the sharing of common questioning and responses as part of the online community. It was also hoped that establishing the twitter community associated with the module would allow the lecturer to better connect students to the research that they undertake. Taking EG168 Scientific & Engineering Skills as an example, (which uses lots of case studies relating to the design of BLOODHOUND SSC, the Land Speed Record vehicle in its delivery, since this is a research project that one of its lecturers works on), via twitter the lecturer was able to keep undergraduate students better informed about progress on this project, and therefore, enhance the relevance of what they were studying to ‘real world’ engineering. The EG168 module is a 100% continual assessment module with 8 assignments spread over a 10 week term with topics covered ranging from experimental methods, entrepreneurship and communication skills to an introduction to programming.

 

Our approach.

Twitter is a free online social networking and microblogging service. Users are able to tweet short (140 character) messages (often using apps on smart phone devices), which might include links to websites, that can be seen by all of the users followers in a timeline. These microblogs may or may not spark online conversation and the content of conversations can be tracked, allowing global or local trends in twitter conversations are measured. Hashtags are often employed by twitter users in order for topics of conversation to be tracked; this is done by including a short expression in the tweet preceeded by the # symbol. For this case, the account name @DrBenEvans was established for the lecturer to be followed by students on the course (although in practise no restriction was placed on who could follow this twitter account). Also, the hashtag #EG168 was established for all conversations relating to the EG168 module. From the beginning of the teaching blog, students on the EG168 module were encouraged to follow @DrBenEvans and use the #EG168 hashtag in all tweets relating directly to the module. Finally, using the free SAP PowerPoint Twitter tool plugin [1], live twitter feedback was utilised within lectures at the end of each lecture slot. This plugin for PowerPoint allowed students to tweet thoughts and questions regarding the lecture content, using the EG168 hashtag, and these were displayed on the screen in the lecture in the format shown in Figure below

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video mini lectures

Camtasia Studio was used to create short video lectures to compliment the material delivered in the actual ‘physical’ lectures. The software package was extremely straightforward to utilise with the aid of a stylus pen to write on the screen. Typically, a 10minute video would take approximately 30mins of time to produce including sketching a plan for the lecture, set up, recording. These short videos were then uploaded to a YouTube channel and the link tweeted from the @DrBenEvans twitter account. This often generated interesting discussion and feedback on twitter which allowed students to compare reactions to the lecture content, tweet questions to the lecturer and gave the lecturer useful feedback on how well the students were understanding and processing the theory in the lecture content. The philosophy of utilising the technologies and social media tools detailed above was to establish a conversation between students and lecturer(s) that began in the lecture hall and was facilitated beyond the traditional lecture set up utilising YouTube and Twitter. This approach was deemed to work best when there was a strong interaction between the three components The interaction between traditional lecture hall environment, Twitter and YouTube Note that the above teaching tools supplemented traditional methods (e.g. lectures, laboratory sessions) and e-learning methods (e.g. Blackboard). It was not compulsory for students to engage with these technologies

 

The outcomes.

Over two thirds of the 650 strong cohort for this module were following @DrBenEvans via twitter by the end of the module and the video lectures were streamed over 900 times in total. When questioned, the majority of students stated that they were engaging with this teaching method primarily using smart phones. Despite initial concerns that a greater availability of material online and contact with the lecturer via social media would reduce attendance at lectures, it was found that lecture attendance actually increased. Before the introduction of this teaching intervention lecture attendance typically dropped to approximately 70% by the end of term. After the introduction of this approach lecture attendance was 83% at the end of the term. It is believed that this statistic is a result of students feeling more involved in the learning process and sense of belonging to a learning community and therefore less likely to disengage.

 

Student performance and satisfaction

A snapshot of students’ comments pre- and post-intervention are included in below Obviously these comments are only small and selected example of the change in attitudes of students but it is believed that these comments are representative. Additionally a wordle was created using the exact contents of the students’ feedback comments (excluding prepositions). It is evident that the dominant themes have changed in a positive sense.

 

Pre-intervention	Pre-intervention
not relevant for medical engineering	module was really stimulating
not enough feedback on assignments	lecturer did a good job of making boring topics not quite so boring
do not understand why this is relevant	lots of applications
unengaging tedious and boring	videos great for revision
not enough involvement	enjoyed following the lecturer on twitter
lecturers needed to involve students instead of just standing at the front

 

 

Did it work?

Personal Page http://www.swan.ac.uk/staff/academic/engineering/evansben/

Twitter https://twitter.com/DrBenEvans

 

An example of the Mini Lectures

 

 

SALT Conference 2012 Presentation