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Teacher Education
A short video clip on turning passive video use into active growth with reflection and feedback
Discover how structured reflection, clear purpose, and guided feedback turn video into a tool for meaningful learning and growth.
Dr. Heather Lucas:
So it’s easy for video assignments to feel passive. You record, you upload, you’re done. But what matters most is what the student does after they upload the video. So we need to build in that. They have to do the timestamped annotations. There should be maybe reflective prompts or follow up conversation that helps ’em actually see their own teaching and make sense of it when reflection is paired with the guided feedback. That’s the secret sauce for pre-service teacher development. Reflection is good, feedback is good. When we can combine them, that’s when you’re getting the most bang for your buck. I think that’s another one would be clarify the purpose. I just kind of talked about this, but making it formative, not just evaluative. So if video is framed purely as an assessment tool, students will curate and they will perform.
But if we position it as a growth tool, as a way to make them more self-aware, more confident, more skilled, they tend to be more honest, more open, and more willing to learn. And that purpose should be clearly communicated and consistent throughout the process. I think another one is training supervisors in digital presence and feedback. So this one came through strongly in the research. Pre-service teacher were deeply affected by how much or how little their supervisor engaged with their videos. If they want meaningful use of video, we have to support supervisors in giving timely, specific, constructive feedback. Even short check-ins can make a huge difference in how valued and guided the students feel. And just like we need to train our candidates how to be reflective of what does reflective comments look like. We also need to be training our supervisors on giving feedback and video observation because in-person observations looked different than video observations.
I felt when I was doing in-person observations, my notes were a lot more descriptive. I was describing what I was seeing, but that’s not necessary and not as necessary, I suppose, in video observations because the evidence is right there. So maybe walking through with your supervisors what feedback looks like in video and giving examples or exemplars of videos with great guided feedback. It can be incredible helpful for setting expectations of what’s expected here. So ultimately it’s not about using more video, it’s about using it better with clear structure, aligned purpose, and really an engaged supervisor. It can be really powerful.