A simple way of creating short videos for micro-learning in biological sciences

Education today demands that we as teachers meet all student learning needs. Does this demand put undue pressure on the teacher to facilitate all learning styles no matter what the topic or discipline? If teachers do not... [ view full abstract ]

Education today demands that we as teachers meet all student learning needs. Does this demand put undue pressure on the teacher to facilitate all learning styles no matter what the topic or discipline? If teachers do not provide these tailored supports do we then risk holding back our students? One aspect of this student need stems from modern society. The distractions associated with life today, and in particular online life, are ever present both in and outside the classroom. Attention spans of the modern student appear to be more limited than ever. How can we adapt to this change? Can we create stimulating short-form content which can capture their attention and encourage their engagement with learning? Micro-learning is one possible solution which has gained traction in recent years. As of yet there is no clear definition of what micro-learning is but it has been described as “micro-content delivery with a sequence of micro interactions which enable users to learn without information overload” (1).

We came up with the idea of creating simple, short videos, of no more than 5 minutes duration. The content in these videos focused on core fundamentals of modules in biological science including DNA replication, amino acid structure and cell growth curves. These videos were used across QQI levels 6-8 to assist with both pre-lecture preparation and revision.

To make our videos more personable and interesting we inserted the class lecturer into the recordings. This had the added advantage of giving confidence to the students that this material was important to their specific learning needs. We recorded the lecturer explaining the fundamental material in front of a blue screen using a modern smartphone. We then superimposed them over an animated PowerPoint slide. Students were able to watch these short videos on their computers or mobile devices. Feedback from students and colleagues to date has been very positive and we plan to roll it out to more modules. We would encourage colleagues to try out this type of micro-learning. You can view an example at this link: http://bit.ly/mlgrowthcurve

  1.            Bruck PA, Motiwalla L, Foerster F, editors. Mobile Learning with Micro-content: A Framework and Evaluation. BLED 2012 Proceedings 2; 2012.