Educator Instruction

  Can I please get your attention…I want to talk about attention! I am currently working on some projects that involve reviewing and building online programmes that use video recordings as significant parts of the teaching. A key discussion point we have had is the question - what duration should the recordings be? The perceive wisdom is that attention spans are shrinking, and as such a 10-15 minute norm has developed as the ideal duration of a recording. Influenced by the TED talk approach (max 18 minutes for a talk) and the average YouTube video duration of 11.7 minutes, this perceived wisdom has taken hold. Personally I rarely if ever watch a YouTube recording at normal pace, I listen to audio books at 2x speed, and recently find myself wanting to speed up live TV programmes! However, I frequently watch video podcasts that are 2-3hrs in duration – I just don’t watch them in one go. So what does this mean for the duration of educational recordings? ·   ...

  Delivering sessions on HE Assessment and Feedback recently the hot topic of discussion - Generative AI. 18 months since ChatGPT hit the mainstream and the talk is still of how we can possibly detect when students have used generative AI to create an assessment submission. I don’t have the answer to that – does anyone? However some take away points: ·        Assessment needs to continue to evolve – with a continued emphasis on authentic assessment that requires higher level thinking ·        Increased utilisation of in person assessments/assessment components can mitigate the essay production capability of generative AI (but open up other resource challenges) ·        It is important to decide WHAT part generative AI CAN play in assessment. ·        Perhaps we need to reframe Generative AI and consider the possibilities not simply the challenges ...