Introducing the Multimedia theme of LEaD

Multimedia Theme Team: Jo Richardson, Mo Pamplin, Fariha Afghan, Martin Agombar & Steve McCombe

At City we are seeing more and more people using multimedia to create revision presentations, online lectures for use in approaches such as the flipped classroom, demonstrations of clinical or experimental procedures, and simulations of professional practice. We’ve seen staff present their work at events such as the Learning at City conference, Health’s Got Talent, the Cass Teaching and Learning Showcase, Made at City, Civil Engineering Show ‘n’ Tell… the list goes on.

Increasingly, we also have the wherewithal to allow students to create multimedia resources such as videos, sound recordings and animations themselves, either to submit as assessed work or to contribute to future cohorts’ learning. Our presentation at the Learning at City conference in June discussed some of the research in this area, and briefly touched on some examples from City.

We have a passionate and experienced team dedicated to helping staff and students at City get the most out of the multimedia technologies and the facilities we have at our disposal. So what can we offer you, and what do we aim to achieve? The mission we have set ourselves is to improve and enrich the educational experience of our students by:

Podcasting Room at the MILL

Giving staff the tools, support and confidence to create and use multimedia resources
We have software, facilities and equipment available to enable you to create engaging multimedia resources yourself, ranging from the Moodle video resource for recording an on-the-fly screencast at your desk, through to the podcasting rooms in the MILL and the Drysdale TV studio. The MILL, Multimedia and Innovation Learning Lab in Goswell Place, offers training, recording facilities and loanable equipment to support your multimedia project. As a team, we can offer you training and support in a range of multimedia creation tools and facilities, as well as online repositories such as Box of Broadcasts. Use Service Now to make a request, or for more details see our pages on the Educational Technologies Guidance website.

Guiding and informing the innovative use of multimedia in higher education
Knowing how to use the software is one thing but how do you ensure that what you produce will further students’ learning? We are contributing to the development of several blended learning modules and programmes at City, and can offer guidance and advice on storyboarding, composition, and structure of video and audio resources. We are currently looking at potential applications of technologies such as augmented reality, mobile video, and the benefits of multimedia resources to students with learning differences.

Putting multimedia production and publishing in the hands of students to facilitate innovative assessment and PDP
Lecturers and programme teams across a range of disciplines are starting to look more closely at methods for allowing students to create, upload and share multimedia resources as part of their learning, whether this is commenting on or annotating online video, creating screencasts, demonstrating practical skills, video-based reflection, or web conferencing for group work. Students are increasingly expecting to be able to use multimedia tools in their education in the same way as they do in their online personal lives – we need to consider how we can enable this in a pedagogically informed way. We are always interested to hear from you if you are interested in implementing a student-led multimedia project, or if you even run such activities with students already.

TV studio with bluescreen, autocue and control booth

Providing expert training and resources to enable creation of high-quality multimedia resources
We encourage the use of do-it-yourself multimedia tools such as screencasting and podcasting, and we have a collection of loanable cameras, audio recorders and mobile devices to help you achieve this. Some projects require a higher production value and in such situations we can support you to create professional standard audio and video recordings, either on location or in the TV studio.

The Educational Technology Team works across the three themes of Blended Learning, Multimedia and Learning Spaces.