Exploring Students' perception in using Student Generated Videos in teaching information technology subjects

Recently, many lessons were conducted online, and many teachers were forced to adopt online teaching upon short notice (Grieger & Leontyev, 2020). Even when the format of examinations and tests must be changed so that students can do them at home, the format and contents of student assignments remain the same as those for face-to-face classrooms. When students and teachers can only interact virtually, the role of student assignments has become more important. The widespread use of technologies means that students can complete assignment tasks in ways that were not feasible before. Student-generated videos (SGVs) are one of the emerging learning approaches with students demonstrating their perceived knowledge by submitting video assignments (Campbell et al., 2020).

SGVs offers a format that has improved authenticity of submission and fairness in grading. In the digital age, students are tempted to borrow online materials without comprehension. True understanding is hard to guarantee, as in written reports, paraphrasing mostly reflects students' language ability. In oral presentation, it is difficult for teachers to tell whether students are reading directly from unoriginal content. Nevertheless, IT skills emphasise hands-on demonstration instead of mere description, therefore, SGVs can be an effective assessment format for IT subjects.

SGVs already have some theoretical foundation. Using Bloom’s taxonomy, Marley (2014) found that SGVs not only reinforce lower levels of learning such as memory and comprehension, but also enables the highest level through producing original videos on new topics.

According to multimedia learning theory, multi-sensory learning design of SGVs can generate better outcomes (Mayer, 1997). In dual coding theory, language and nonverbal stimuli are processed differently by the brain, multimodal messages could enhance memory, comprehension, and deeper learning (Paivio & Clark, 2006). In the VARK model (Fleming, 2001), the creation of SGVs may reduce the difficulty level of completing coursework for students who are less confident in written tasks.

Students today are consumers of videos. In such a passive role as a receiver, there is limited opportunity of learning-by-doing. The true value of education is to empower students to become a “prosumers”, who not only consume packaged contents, but also to become producers through guided learning materials (Lee & McLoughlin, 2007).

Research gaps have been identified after reviewing some recent works on SGVs in Q1 and Q2 journals. From the limited relevant literature, it found that most of the existent research are mainly in the disciplines of science, language and health (Balija, 2020; Campbell et al., 2019; Campbell et al., 2020; Frenzel et al., 2013; Omar et al., 2013; Orús et al., 2016; Pereira et al., 2014; Snowball & McKenna, 2017; Willmott, 2015). The application of SGVs in IT subjects is under-researched. Also, there is also a lack of research in this area in the Asian context. Hence, there is gap to be filled by conducting research of using SGVs in teaching IT subjects in Hong Kong. The PI conducted a pilot study on SGVs in one subject in semester one of 2020/2021. The subject was enrolled by 39 students, who submitted two SGVs. Then 25 of the students responded in an online survey. The SGVs are based on very simple tasks and it was found that students’ perceptions were mixed. Therefore, there is a need to conduct further research in this area.