Video submission for examination
This is an example of a specific examination conducted at KTH. The course described contains several activities that the student must do to pass. One part involves the student submitting an individual video where the student orally presents an assignment. It contributes to an examining activity with identity verification that can be completed simultaneously in courses with many students.
Video submission instead of oral exam
The course has too many students for it to be possible to complete ordinary oral examinations, but still has learning objectives where an oral exam is one of the better ways to examine. By presenting orally with a video, the whole class can carry out the simplified form of oral examination simultaneously, which both makes the examination fairer and makes the planning easier. Examining through a video makes the students prepare as before an oral presentation, which contributes to the students' proficiency in oral presentation. Approved submissions also have the possibility to, subject to the consent of the student, be reused as course material for other students.
Structure based on experience
Videos are well suited both as individual or group assignments. An example of how it is used is that students are given a home assignment to work on for two hours. After two hours, they must individually submit a 3-5 minute long video where the student reports their skill and competence for the assignment / course element. The limited time on both the home assignment and the video is for the students to focus on the task and not on editing the video. For that reason, it can also be beneficial for the activity to be graded as Pass / Fail, as it signals that editing is superfluous. A broader rating scale can unnecessarily lead the mind to work with editing. Submissions that are Pass / Fail are probably also less interesting to request as examples of approved course elements.
Prior to submission, it is important to inform students about how the videos will be handled. Grade-informing submissions are required to be archived for two years and archived videos can be requested as public documents. Non-grade informing material should be handled in accordance with the Data Protection Act (GDPR), i.e. documents with personal data should not be stored longer than necessary.
Formulate the task
It is also (just like for a regular presentation) good to give instructions on how to give the explanation. For example, state that the student should think "as if it is to explain to student colleagues in the course", even if it is the examiner who will watch and assess the video.
To counteract collaboration, it is recommended that not all students receive the same task but that there are a number of variants of the task that are randomly assigned to the students. The variation can also be an advantage when it is time to assess. After 20 videos of the same assignment, it is interesting as an examiner to hear the explanation for another assignment and not 180 more videos about the same assignment.
The wording of the assignment also affects the possibility for a student to borrow someone else's work. Describing a solution or calculation in their own words, making an analysis and reflecting or specifying a practical application is difficult for students to do in the video without actually having the skills being tested. On the page Design written assignments , there are more examples and recommendations on how questions can be formulated.
Enables identity verification
Among the advantages of videos is that the student is identifiable as the one who reports their knowledge. The limited time for the home assignment, as well as varying the task, prevents students from enlisting the help of classmates. However, it is important to think through the question so that it is difficult for the students to borrow someone else's material and reproduce it.
Manage submitted videos
Although the videos are small, many videos take up a lot of space to store. Microsoft OneDrive offers both students and teachers storage space and students can share the video with the examiner or submit a link in Canvas. Submitting through Canvas is preferred as it will be easier both as an examiner to find all videos when they are to be assessed, while Canvas handles the archiving requirement of two years for grade-informing submissions.
The experience is that students often prefer to have or arrange access to storage space for videos, for example on Google Drive or Youtube. Then the student is always the owner of the material and the student submits a link with the right for teachers to watch the video. Google Drive has a default lock so that only a few can see the material and videos uploaded to Youtube can be set to not be searchable and not visible to the public. However, these solutions should not be used as there is no agreement on the handling of personal data, GDPR security or structure for the two-year archiving requirement for grade-informing data.