Flipping Feedback: Creating Audio-visual Exemplars to support Feedforward for first year Dental Nursing Students

First year students are required to fill out practical workbooks and submit a laboratory report on a practical as part of their Biology Continuous Assessment. Formatting these documents correctly represents a major challenge... [ view full abstract ]

First year students are required to fill out practical workbooks and submit a laboratory report on a practical as part of their Biology Continuous Assessment. Formatting these documents correctly represents a major challenge for first years, irrespective of instructions included in lab manuals and practical session discussions. The aim of this research was to test student response to provision of online video exemplars as feedforward. It was hoped that having access to narrated video examples of a good and a poor standard of work would help with CA preparation and also ultimately improve quality. Four exemplars from previous years were used in the study; a good workbook, a poor workbook, a mid-level workbook and a good lab report. A document camera was used with Screencast-O-Matic to record pen-strokes synchronised with narration in four 5-7 minute videos uploaded to Moodle. Effectiveness of this feedforward was assessed in a number of ways (1) statistics on Moodle (2) informal discussions in the lab (3) a short survey of 10 questions and (4) a focus group. All students reported finding the videos helpful. The good workbook and good lab report exemplars had the most views. The focus group findings highlighted a boost in confidence for the students, being able to refer to a good exemplar and compare to a poor example (“what not to do”) while carrying out their own work. A preference was noted for video resource over document exemplars. This research was conducted as part the multi-institutional Y1Feedback (www.y1feedback.ie) project, which was funded by the Irish National Forum for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching.