Micro-videos as an online assessment submission format

Most are familiar with Lecture Capture when it comes to online learning, but what about People Capture? 

Videos are a great way to mimic classroom activities.  You normally ask students to tell/show/demonstrate in your classroom, why not the same now that they are at home?  A great thing about online digital submissions, is that they can be any format – pictures, sounds, video, let students be creative.

Students can easily and quickly express themselves in a different modality.  In higher education where the majority of assessments require written work, students enjoy being able to create something other than writing.

How about a video group project?  Each group member contributing a part of a video, and combining to complete an entire scene. 

Video discussions can blend elements of synchronous and asynchronous learning.  In most synchronous learning, you can hear and see each other through a live video chat, whereas recorded video can be a similar way to participate for those with time conflicts or internet difficulties.

It can be a good idea to limit the length of video that you would like your students to submit.  This reduces the amount of internet bandwidth the student will need to upload, will reduce the amount of time it takes you to watch each video, but most importantly it will make your students be concise in their response and think critically about what they want to express if they only have a short amount of time to do it.

This method also has a fairly low barrier to entry in terms of technology requirements.  Households that do not have computer often at least have a smartphone. 

This may be a new technology for you and your students to learn. Always try it out in your LMS first before introducing a new technology to your students to gauge the learning curve one might need.  You don’t necessarily want to spend a lot of time learning a technology that could be better spent on-task, but as I demonstrate, recording video can be a relatively simple task.  I also recommend trying technology that other instructors in your school are using, so you can use each other for support.

Examples

Most modern Learning Management Systems allow for video submissions for assignments, discussion posts and in most other content areas. Here are a few examples:

D2L / Brightspace Pulse:

Canvas (Quercus at UofT):

Google Classroom:

Flipgrid:

Flipgrid (now owned by Microsoft) is an LMS independent way to incorporate short video activities with your students. You can restrict the length of video you want students to record, and you can also add a password to the assignment page for added security and privacy. Try out Flipgrid.