Sprout Labs: Next Generation eLearning
Skills in Nursing
The Health team at the Tasmania Polytechnic knew that video had great potential in their teaching area. They feel they could be making short videos about important skills and they could see how students could use video to record and reflect on their own skill practice as well. With services like YouTube it becomes easy to share these videos as well. The Health team knew the potential but they didn’t have the skills to achieve want they wanted to do; this is where we came in.
How we helped
Instead of doing the filming and editing for the team we trained the teachers in those skills, so they could also show their students to how to do this stuff. Then at the end we did complex work like noise correction, fancy titles and DVD menus for them.
Stage 1: Video production training
The first stage of the project was a one day workshop on video production skills with a group of teachers and one of the Polytechnic’s Resource Development Advisors. This was about things like framing and lighting.
Stage 2: The teachers worked with students
Then the teachers showed these new production skills to the students. The students then filmed each other performing skills. Afterwards, watching these videos become a great reflective tool for the students.
Stage 3: Video editing training
After the students’ filming it was time to look at some video editing skills. In an organisation like the Tasmania Polytechnic, teachers often have access to a limited amount of digital media software. In this case the teachers all had Windows Movie Maker. Even if this not a piece of software we would use for editing, this is what we trained them to use.
Stage 4: Bringing it all together
The last part of the project was bringing all the rough edit videos together onto a DVD. During this stage we did thing like:
- Added titles with photography by Ian Wallace (who is part of the Health Team)
- To develop the look and feel of these we designed 3 mood boards and the team chose which design/mood they liked the most.
- Added simple graphics
- Recorded and edited voiceovers
- Post processing like noise correction and colour correction
- DVD menus
This last stage all happened in November. The teachers were busy with marking and getting their program ready for the next year. It would have been impossible for them at this late stage of the year to have learnt those new skills and delivered the final product on time.
In the end
The teachers ended up with some great new skills and the DVD looked great. We were happy to be able to help out the Health team. We loved working in this way, where the project is a combination of skills development (so is sustainable into the future) and “doing the work”. In this case, our “doing the work” accelerated the progress of the project.
For more information from the team have a look at the case study site at http://www.polytechnic-nursingskills.com
Sprout Labs is a provider of products and services that help next-generation elearning happen today. We love helping you with games and simulations for learning, digital media such as training videos, podcasts, visual learning and visual design. Sprout Labs is a renaissance learning organisation offering a true mixture of creative, technical, and learning expertise. Contact us to talk about how Sprout Labs can help you.
