Seminar on the use of digital resources, particularly webcasts & podcasts, in legal education, and their effects on the design of learning and teaching.

1. Webcasts and podcasts:
digital designs and learning
Professor Paul Maharg
The Australian National University

2. preview
1. Webcasts & podcasts: examples
2. A research project on webcasting
3. Multimedia and learning design
4. Different models of webcasts
5. The wider context of f2f teaching and resource-
based learning

4. Edinburgh University online teaching manifesto
https://onlineteachingmanifesto.wordpress.com/

5. Webcast examples
‘Aesthetics matter: interface design shapes
learning’
Edinburgh University School of Education,
https://onlineteachingmanifesto.wordpress.com/

6. webcasts v.1
Information push by
speaker, navigation
at times problematic.

7. More information: Maharg (2007), chapter 9
webcasts v.2:
Information push by speaker, better controlled by user

8. webcasts v.3
More interactivity
built into the
application.

9. All adhere to Richard E. Mayer’s multimedia principles on:
1. Coherence
2. Signalling
3. Redundancy
4. Spatial contiguity
5. Temporal contiguity

10. webcasts should involve us in re-design of
teaching & learning…
Four principles:
1. Integration: All technologies (electronic, paper, vellum, clay
tablets…) should integrate to support learning across the
curriculum
2. Convergence: electronic technologies need to converge
seamlessly to provide an integrated learning environment.
3. Communication is the heart of an online environment
4. Creativity (sustaining or disruptive) is essential to re-design

11. …and creative use of integrated text & image…
Texts:
– illustrative, explanatory, didactic, discursive, exemplary,
reflective, etc.
– hyperlinked or static
Images:
– via video – role play, pieces to camera, panel sessions
– static photographs, diagrams, graphics, tables, etc
– interactive images, moving or still

12. …in the re-design of digital environments
• not lectures because unconstrained by time, place or audience
• webcasts can be used as organisational centres for information &
knowledge
• must be designed to integrate with other e-technologies and resources, eg
– webcast lectures + discussion forum, web links & chat-room.
– traditional forms of learning & teaching

13. video developments 2001-5
• Over 150 separate video projects, from 2001-2005, in legal
education, both under- & postgraduate.
• Projects ranged from one-off webcasts to an entire series of
webcasts / video lectures spanning a module.
• Used mostly in blended learning, but also in wholly distance-
learning modules
• There were no models, no training courses, little literature –
we learned from observation of what worked and why…

14. Webcast research project
‘Algorithms and analytics re-code education:
pay attention!’
Edinburgh University School of Education,
https://onlineteachingmanifesto.wordpress.com/

15. Webcast Learning Project
Aims
To investigate the
1. variation in student learning
2. quality of student learning on the two procedural courses
Methodology
• Selection of 11 students to track throughout the year
• Students filled in and submitted weekly logs when they used the resources
• Focus group discussion late in semester 1
• Individual interviews in early/mid semester 2 and post-examination
• Questionnaire for project group

16. flexibility of use
‘I find it a hassle coming in here to study. Apart from train
times which are pretty unreliable from where I stay it’s just I
study a lot better at home. I can get up early and study all day
and go to my work and come back and study so I used it at
home.’
‘In my tutorials there were a few dissenting voices about the
whole webcast thing – ‘oh just have the lecture and then it
would be over’ - but that is the whole point, it would be over!’
‘Proper lectures would have been better but the webcast
lectures were convenient.’

17. absence of students
• Lectures are social events for students – webcasts remove this element
from a course – how did they cope?
• Students still talked about the course, through other channels:
everybody would just talk about them. If you didn’t understand
anything you just phone people the night before and say what is this
bit all about? You get cross ideas - some people have different things
• Students still met at tutorials…

18. absence of lecturerAs a result, the image seemed to matter more:
[…] it’s always there and it’s not just a text or a book that you have got because it is someone
else sitting there talking to you. It’s kind of comforting in a way as well, because they know
what they are talking about, you can’t misread it.
I think that intonation as well was really important to me. Just reading something, you can
read it, but the intonation I found really helpful. That was why I did go back over not just my
own notes [for the exam] but actually watch it again because there is emphasis in important
places and that is so important. Also you don’t want to end up completely isolated with no… I
know webcasts are not very interactive anyway but they are much more interactive than
reading a script.
Interviewer: Would it have made any difference to you if you hadn’t actually seen the
person and you had only heard what they were saying […]?
Student: Strange, but I probably hardly looked at it [the webcast image] because I
was writing notes anyway… But I don’t know… it just seems quite nice
having a person there.

19. two approaches to learning
Paperworld student
• Preferred f2f lectures
• Didn’t use learning tools in the CD or online environment
• Used books, not e-resources
• Took verbatim notes from the webcasts
• Only listened to the webcasts once
E-world student
• Comfortable using the webcast environment
• Used online information
• Used a word-processor to type notes
• Viewed and reviewed the webcasts
• Used the learning tools, eg speak-fast button

20. forms of learning: writing/typing notes
‘I think I am happier doing it pen and paper. I guess, I have written shorthand,
rather that typed shorthand, so I think I would rather write and I can write quicker.
But not everyone will be the same as that.’
‘When I did the first few I was writing absolutely everything out and I hadn’t really -
because quite a lot of people were looking at the screen and were writing down
what was on the screen and working their notes around that. I wasn’t doing that. I
was writing everything out [ie webcast and screen text] and that took ages. So it
was like well I’ll just write down what’s on the screen and then write my own notes.‘
‘In the Criminal [webcasts] note taking - I would have preferred to have been able
to take notes on the computer but I didn’t know how launch Microsoft Word.’

21. forms of learning: using two computers
‘I have seen people in the lab with two computers,
and they are listening and typing at the same time.
That would be quite good because although my
typing isn’t fast but if you could have a wee bit of
note-taking then your notes would immediately be
better.’

22. forms of learning: writing and listening
‘First time was a little strange and it took me a while to get
used to pausing and taking notes in conjunction with
watching. Felt a lot more comfortable by the end of [the
second series of webcasts]’
‘It’s like a different way of learning, like if you hear it and then
you write it down and then you read it back. Then you learn
something in three different ways.’

23. ‘If I’m reading notes you can skim over it and you can skip pages, but if you are listening
and you don’t hear something you have to go back and hear it. There is a different flow
as well.’
Interviewer: […] do you think the webcast environment helped or hindered your
exam study?
Student: I think they helped.
Interviewer: Why?
Student: Because you have just got more explanation when you are going over
things that you can never get down in lecture notes or in handouts, to
understand it. I think you learn better when you are sitting listening as
well, instead of sitting reading, because you have a tendency just to
skim through things when you are reading. You’ve done it all before and
you should know it, but if you haven’t listened to something you can
speed it up a bit. But you are still having to listen to it all, you can’t just
skip big bits out. So I think it definitely helped.
knowledge objects: forms of revision

24. use of webcast as mnemonic
‘I think, I would probably, I think, I would go back and watch them again. I would
probably sit with my notes and just… You wouldn’t be learning new things again, so you
would be just listening and reading over your notes and make sure you took in all the
points. I would actually find that easier revision. I don’t know if that is just my
personality. But to listen to somebody going over it again, and it also means that if there
is a particular section that I feel I have learned quite well, then I don’t need to go over it
again. So, I would pick out the sections that I think, ‘oh goodness, I don’t remember the
Interim Interdict, Options Hearing or whatever’ and I’ll go back to that particular section
and just watch the webcast again with my notes, probably.’
‘I would actually use it for revision, just watch the webcast again. I find I take things in
much better verbally than sitting reading particularly if it is a subject that can be a bit
dry. To actually hear a lecture again would be better than, just than – if we just had
lectures and you didn’t have the webcasts that we could go back to then all I would have
to revise with would be my notes and that’s a lot drier and sometimes you kinda look at
your notes and think ‘goodness I don’t know actually remember what she was talking
about’ and you find that the lecture, when you go over the point a few times, it makes it
much easier to take in.’

25. use of webcast as mnemonic
‘I would come in and maybe I would have something else to do
during the day but then I would be able to fit in 45 minutes
watching a lecture and taking outline notes maybe that time.
And then what was useful about them was I could go back and
just listen to it with my notes and not have to take any notes. I
don’t know, there is something mechanical which is very useful
about taking notes and copying down to memorise stuff but
there is something in terms of just sitting and listening to
somebody describing what happens […] – I thought that was
particularly useful to me anyway.’

26. quality of learning
Interviewer: Do you think the webcast environments helped or hindered your
study for the exams?
Student: Definitely helped. It was very, very positive. I know some people
have complained that they found it hard to work and all the
rest of it. But I just thought in comparison – I have sat four
years of exams before I came here, I am an expert as far as
exams are concerned, and this has really, was two of the
easiest exams I have sat, in terms of revision for them. I felt
that I came in well prepared – maybe my results will show
that this was not the case! I definitely felt that I was really
learning the material. I understood it better.

27. Different models of webcasts
‘There are many ways to get it right online:
”best practice” ignores context’
Edinburgh University School of Education,
https://onlineteachingmanifesto.wordpress.com/

32. Model 2: i-tutorial
Guide
Texts Test
WORKSHOP
i-Tutorial
Preparatory activities
Sources Documents

34. Model 3: On-line module
Webcast
environment
webcasts
activitiesforum

38. Webcasts/podcasts in the wider
context of f2f teaching & other
resources
‘Online teaching need not be complicit with
the instrumentalisation of education’
Edinburgh University School of Education,
https://onlineteachingmanifesto.wordpress.com/

39. so is this
how it might it look?
LMS
My e-portfolio
Web/pod/quickcasts
SIMPLE case management
Myannotateddocuments
E-textbooks

40. so is this
how it might it look?
LMS
My e-portfolio
Web/pod/quickcasts
SIMPLE case management
Myannotateddocuments
E-textbooks

42. learning as aggregation + high impact
practices
Flipboard

43. aggregation
Aggregates:
- Social media
- RSS
- Google Reader
- Customized ToC
- Photos, videos
into an online magazine
format. See also The Future
of the Book:
http://vimeo.com/15142335.
Or go to
http://www.touchpress.com

47. Think of aggregation as:
1. the social media of our students’
nested lives
2. a genealogy of knowledge where there is
textura and the development around
them of debate, analyses (glossa) which
change more quickly than the textura
3. an ethical practice community that
develops much faster than medieval
scholarly circles
aggregation…

48. … and in real time

49. references
Dewey, J. (1916, 2011). Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the
Philosophy of Education. Simon & Brown, New York.
Edinburgh University School of Education. (2016). Online Teaching
Manifesto. Available at:
https://onlineteachingmanifesto.wordpress.com/
Maharg, P. (2007). Transforming Legal Education: Learning and Teaching the
Law in the Early Twenty-First Century. Ashgate Publishing, Farnham.

50. Email:paul.maharg@anu.edu.au
Web: paulmaharg.com