The Importance of Framing
It is important for educators to promote student engagement with videos
by clearly stating why the material was selected for a given course with
the given students in mind (Brame 2016). As the instructor, LMG made a
conscious effort to frame the homework assignments for the students
throughout the quarter. Prior to students completing the first homework
assignment, this framing included:
- Explaining the purpose of the video homework in terms of grading
structure (low stakes formative assessments)
- Explaining the purpose of the video homework in terms of learning
(supplementing flipped discussion sections, showcasing current
research by current scientists)
- Explaining the purpose of the voluntary feedback question
- Explicitly encouraging honest feedback, and instructor openness to
negative perspectives
Continued framing throughout the quarter included (italicized bullet
points represent framing components that the instructor would, in the
future, include prior to the first homework assignment):
- Showing students how to access captions and transcripts for
videos
- Encouraging students to look up unfamiliar terminology in their
textbook or online
- Encouraging honest feedback by showing anonymized student comments
about videos to highlight different student perspectives on the
assignment, explicitly including a variety of negative and positive
comments and stating that both are useful for the instructor. As
student feedback declined throughout the quarter, this strategy was
repeated halfway through the course and student responses increased.
This approach also served to normalize the experience for students who
struggled with the material.
- Explicitly referencing video and homework content during lecture and
discussion
- Continuing to clarify instructor perspective on the videos. For
instance, the instructor considered Homework 4 to be the most
difficult video and notified students ahead of time that they may need
to allocate more time that week to the homework assignment.
- Responding to student frustration on difficult homeworks. Following
Homework 3, the instructor provided a worked example of the difficult
questions, included extra practice on this topic on the exam study
guides, and reminded students that one purpose of homework assignments
is to give students practice on difficult concepts when the gradepoint
stakes are low, in order to better prepare them for high-stakes exams.
- Explicitly encouraging honest feedback on the end-of-quarter
evaluations, including instructor openness to negative perspectives,
and ensuring that students understood their responses were entirely
anonymous and not visible to the instructor until after final course
grades were submitted to the registrar.