What’s outside the learning box? Resisting traditional forms of learning and assessment with the video essay: a dialogue between screen media & education

ABSTRACT

This article explores how the video essay can be part of a radical pedagogy in the arts and humanities. Written as a dialogue between a screen studies educationalist and a researcher in contemporary education theory, the article examines the different ways that the video essay can be argued to reframe and resist dominant forms of pedagogy. Drawing on small-scale empirical research with a cohort of third year undergraduates at Deakin University, each of the authors read the data through a specific lens: Sean looks to the ideas and themes of radical pedagogy; and Jo draws upon contemporary assessment research. While the article starts from their different positions, it comes together to recognise their shared belief in learning and assessment that thinks and creates outside the box.

KEYWORDS:

• Video essay
• learning
• criticality
• creativity
• radical pedagogy
• assessment policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Sean Redmond is Professor of Screen and Design at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. He has been a media and screen educator for over 25 years, including being Chief Examiner of the NEAB A Level Media Studies syllabus (1999–2001) in the UK, which championed the ‘critical and creative autonomy’ of students. He is the author of 15 books, is a curator and installation artist, and guest edited (with Tessa Dwyer and Claire Perkins) an edition of the video essay journal, (In) Transition, on the Poetics of Eye Tracking: https://mediacommons.org/intransition/theme-week/2017/36/poetics-eye-tracking. Sean’s video essay work, The Ear That Dreams: Eye Tracking Sound in the Moving Image, can be found here: https://mediacommons.org/intransition/2017/09/07/ear-dreams-eye-tracking-sound-moving-image.

Joanna Tai is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) at Deakin University. Her research interests include student perspectives on learning and assessment within a digital world, peer-assisted learning, feedback and assessment literacy, developing capacity for evaluative judgement, and research synthesis. Joanna is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, co-convenor of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) Assessment and Measurement SIG, and is the Treasurer for the Australian and New Zealand Association for Health Professions Education (ANZAHPE). Her doctoral work won the Association for Medical Education Europe (AMEE) inaugural PhD prize in 2016. She has a background in medicine and health professions education.

Notes

1 We were only able to recruit three students who were available when invitations were extended for the focus group. Many students leave Melbourne on completing their units and this is something we properly failed to consider in the timing of the research. The timing was necessary due to the potential conflict of interest and power relationship since the lead researcher was also the unit co-ordinator. Thus, all subject marks had to be finalised prior to the focus group.