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HRD 467 - Practicum in Professional Technical EducationThis page contains links into two different sets of videos, biographical information about the author, and background information on this project. The first set of videos (HRD 403 Control Videos) were recorded during a course at Idaho State University on teaching methods, a part of the Human Resource Training and Development program. These videos were taken in class for the purpose of critiquing student presentations. The second set of videos were produced in an exploration of how to work around the problems present in the first set of videos. The HRD 403 videos are the control for my exploration. The purpose of this practicum is to begin to develop portable techniques that can be taken into any training environment and used to produce production quality web based training videos, in a cost effective manner, for business and higher education with the goal of expanding the educational opportunities available to the disabled and distance post-secondary students.- A. G. Van Osdol |
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Progress Report 3 |
What do you do in a practicum?In post secondary education (after high school) an opportunity may be given to students to test what they have learned in class by applying it in the real world. This is what is called a "Practicum". Professional Technical Education is no different. In my case the department needed some web page development done. Since I have been a programmer and Internet developer for many years I was given the task. The Idea Bank is located on Idaho State University's Human Resource Training and Development web page. My advisor was surprised when I asked what should I do with the remaining 116 hours of my 120 hour practicum. Tutoring "Guerrilla Mathematics" in ISU's Math Center, or making myself available to disabled Veteran and vocational rehabilitation students as a mathematics tutor did not fulfill the required time for my practicum. The only solution was to invent a project to fill in the missing activities. Choosing an area of study.During the Spring semester of 2009 I observed the difficulties faced by my peers when given mini-DVD's containing video of our presentations and group activities. The format of the videos, information about how to access it, even basic information on the camera itself was unavailable. In another class I observed one of our graduate students recording lectures on the same equipment (mini-DVD camcorder) for use in an online version of the course. While sitting in the classroom, observing the recording process, I identified several difficulties:
2) Questions from the class were not included because of the difficulty of moving the single video/audio source; 3) Editing the videos and formatting them for presentation fell to the instructor; 4) Stopping class every 20 - 30 minutes to finalize and insert a new disk threw off our classes schedule, not to mention the momentum developed by the instructor and students, which resulted in staying after our classes scheduled time 15 - 20 minutes or more. Since I was looking for a practicum activity directly related to Professional Technical Education I offered to assist with the project. Because it was late in the spring semester and the course was moving online after the summer break my instructor felt that there was little I could do that would be of value to the university. The reason they were using the camera in a live class instead of one of the studio classrooms operated by the university was scheduling conflicts, more precisely the fact that the instructor could not move the location of the class to a studio classroom where the course could be recorded. The instructor could go to one of these studios and record the lectures, but there was simply no time, so they were trying the camera. I do not know for sure, but I think the instructor will be lecturing in a studio during the break, after determining the mini-DVD camcorder video was not high enough quality. My belief is that the technology available today makes million dollar studios unnecessary for creating web based archived instruction. An experienced operator can enter into any formal or informal training setting with a modest amount of equipment and get the job done without adversely effecting the instruction. I have taken many online classes and from the point of view of the student, a learner centered classroom with students is preferable to an instructor centered static lecture performed without students, and created in a studio setting. The instructor centered format is little better than checking out a book at the library and reading it. If this was an effective way to teach we would no longer need educational institutions beyond high school. This technique has been tried and is slowly being phased out by many universities or combined with class time in a multi-mode instructional format. It seems that even when pre-recorded, student questions and their interactions with each other and the instructor inspire thought about the material. Thought about the material causes more of the information to be retained and can become useable after class. If you combine this with real time group projects and classroom time with the instructor for Q & A discussions, you have a multi-mode format that uses the web based video technology effectively. Consider the problems associated with the cost of technicians and scheduling studio time, the additional responsibilities of production duties, usually assigned to the instructor, and an additional class to teach for an already busy faculty member. It seems difficult if not impossible for our educational institutions and businesses to provide online content as quickly as they would like, and at a price they can afford. This provides a unique opportunity for individuals who have already had a career in IT and who are beginning a career in Professional Technical Education. Creating the web based video portion of multi-mode instruction is the small piece of the pie I have chosen to study for this practicum. Finally getting down to it...This practicum is an exploration of how to bring Internet based video instruction to the disabled and distance student, and doing it with the smallest possible impact to the instructor and the students. This will allow institutions to reach a broader audience, allow faculty to pursue multi-mode instruction, and provide the student with the opportunity to review materials as needed, instead of in class and/or via a text book. It no longer requires millions of dollars of equipment and technicians to take the classroom onto the Internet. My intent is to be able to enter any training/educational environment and produce web based video instruction with the intent of reducing the long term overhead of training and increase the number of educational opportunities available to the public. Naturally I chose pre-algebra as the subject for my videos. I can stand up at the board and show you how to solve equations all day long. Fortunately for the viewer each tutoring session will be about an hour long. These sessions are not complete instruction. They are intended to be used in conjunction with classroom instruction, much like a tutoring session in real time. The scope of these tutorials are limited to the first ten pre-algebra topics.
2) Signed Numbers 3) Number Line Theory 4) Addition 5) Subtraction 6) Rounding and Estimating 7) Multiplication 8) Division 9) Exponents 10) Order of Operations To test and control the overall quality of these tutorial videos I have used presentations taken in one of my classes during the Spring 2009 semester. These videos were created with the same equipment that was used for recording live classes intended to be published in a web based course at Idaho State University. They have been copied from the mini-DVD format and encoded into Flash so that they download progressively to the viewer's computer. Adobe Acrobat has been used to encode supporting documents in the PDF format. Please keep in mind this is NOT television. There are no makeup technicians or control rooms. These are educational exercises recorded for the purpose of critiquing the presentations. Below are links into the HRD403 archive and into the Developmental Mathematics Pre-Algebra Tutorials. These will be filmed in my kitchen (yes really, I am not joking) to demonstrate the portability of the techniques developed in producing web based instructional video. The layouts of the pages are simple, out of necessity, and each is publicly available on this web site. I am aware that my explorations are remedial compared to other media productions, but simpler is often the only way to get the job done in a timely fashion and within budget. Since there is NO budget and NO time, the techniques I develop here are perfectly suited to application in business, education, science, and industry, where administrators often make extensive demands of instructors to use technology without first providing the basic skills and tools to do the job. Your computer will need both Adobe Flash and Acrobat to view the videos and supporting materials. Links to download and install Adobe Flash Player and Acrobat Reader are provided on the bottom of this page. Constructive comments and criticisms from educators, students, and other professionals are welcome and shall be posted for other visitors to read and think about.
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Click here to get Adobe Flash Player to view the videos. Click here to get Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the other materials. |
Please visit some of my other web site projects. Thanks for stopping by! - A. G. Van Osdol
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2/6/2012 12:56:35 PM 1072 1072 video
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