Authors
Trevor Collins, Julia Cooke, Philip Wheeler, Kadmiel Maseyk, Julie Robson
Publication date
2018
Description
Historically, the OU have developed the use of broadcast media to demonstrate and engage students in STEM practical work. Recently this involved the development of interactive web broadcasts, which display a live video in a web page alongside interactive widgets that collate and display students’ responses to questions set by the presenter. Developed during the 2014 presentation of the second level Practical Science module (S288-14B) the approach taken has been for the presenter(s) to prepare a set of decision points in their presentation, where they can adapt their presentation based on the students’ responses. The resulting system developed in KMi is called Stadium Live. The administrator interface supports the creation of events, the selection and authoring of questions from a menu of widget types, and the presentation of student activity data (such as the number of students and their interactions). With capital support from HEFCE, a teaching lab has been set up at the OU and fitted with the audio-video equipment needed to support live broadcasting. This is used across a range of STEM undergraduate modules to introduce students to practical work, relating it to the concepts and processes covered in their module. In the context of fieldwork specifically, second level Environmental Science (S206) students have participated in a one-week field investigation each May undertaken by three lecturers at an ecology field site on the OU campus. This involves two field broadcasts and one lab broadcast on three weekday evenings lasting around 30 minutes each. During the ‘fieldcasts’ students use the widgets to identify potential things to …
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