Worked example videos to support resit students

Quick summary

Short videos providing worked answers to the recent exam paper have proved a useful revision tool for resit students in the School of Engineering and Material Science.

Background and context

Late summer resits (LSRs) provide an important opportunity for first years to resit any failed examinations and thus progress to the second year. It is evident these students require some additional support with their studies, to gain understanding of the subject area and prepare for the examination, but with no timetabled lectures for these students, and many having returned home and not in London, it is difficult to find effective ways to provide additional teaching support for the cohort.

Whilst we run forums and students can ask questions and get help with specific topics, we feel it is very powerful to provide them with direct support concerning where they went wrong with the examination paper the first time, and to help them understand how they should have tackled the questions correctly.

In order to achieve this, we ensure the resit students have access to the exam paper they failed and the worked answers, to help them learn. However, we often receive questions asking for further explanation of the worked answers.

To this end, we put up short videos working through every question on the exam paper in detail, so the students can watch these to augment their understanding of the paper. Students then watch the videos whilst working through the previous exam paper, and we can be confident they are correctly understanding the topic. They can use forums and email as necessary for further clarification of the subjects.

Methodology

We booked the E-Learning Studio as the location is ideal. We want to be able to video the document camera and record sound clearly, so we can talk and work through calculations or answers to questions simultaneously. It is better not to have videos of ourselves, and it is important the sound is clear.

We completed all recordings during the exam period, generally recording an exam as soon after it has been sat as possible. We work through the paper, recording each question as a separate file. If we notice in marking that a certain question has provided particularly problematic, we can spend longer explaining that particular answer.

Recordings are linked to the relevant QMplus pages for the resit students once exam results are out, giving students time to use these and prepare for the August resits.

Outcomes / results

We provided videos for late summer resits support for the first time in 2012/13. Our first year progression rose from around 85% before LSRs to 96% after LSRs indicating that the resources were of benefit to the students. We have recorded all exam answers again this year and will monitor the use of the recordings over the summer period.