Design a video assessment

When developing a video assessment task you must account for the ability and capacity of your students to deliver what is asked of them. Prepare for potential accessibility challenges and provide the strategic scaffolding (Wass & Golding 2014) to support students with the necessary guidance and resources to succeed, especially if it involves unfamiliar technical and presentation skills.

As with all assessments, it is vital that students have clear instructions about the purpose of the assessment and what they are required to do. Whether it’s an individual task or a group work, students need to demonstrate knowledge, skills, and ability to critically evaluate and present their own findings. Students should also be reminded about academic integrity and practices of copyright if they are using others’ work in their videos. 

Use the Content Editor to provide clear instructions about the assessment. Instructions should be consistent with the subject outline document.

Designing a rubric is significant to any assessment, however in video assessments there are some new aspects that need to be considered. Unlike traditional assignments, multimedia resources and tools add another level of skills that students will be developing in video assessment tasks, therefore, some academics may wish to consider these new skills while designing a video assessment rubric. Initially, it’s worthwhile to remember that you need to be as clear and detailed about each criteria as possible.

Video assessment criteria can vary based on the video assessment type and the anticipated subject learning outcomes. For example, in a media subject such as journalism, it’s important to include criteria that assess the production elements of the video (e.g. final editing) however, video editing skills may become of less focus for nursing students when they are asked to demonstrate a clinical skill by recording a video of themselves performing clinical skills.

Overall, all video assessment rubrics should consider the following criteria:

• Audiovisual language & communication
• Ethics
• Discipline knowledge & Professional Readiness 
• Interpersonal communication

Some students can find technology challenging. Adequate technical support can help students develop their video skills. There are many techniques that you can use to enhance student digital skills in creating videos such as:

• Don’t reinvent the wheel – provide resources on how to create a video using smart phones are in abundance on the internet, find the right one and add it to the assessment instructions area
• Storyboarding and prototypes – ask students to start by sketching a storyboard using pen and paper; you can also suggest working in an agile approach where students start developing a quick draft/prototype and submit for peer-review
• Practice, practice and practice – it always pays off and can reduce anxiety when on camera
• Simple video production skills – adequate lighting and clear sound can always improve the quality of the final product

On the other hand, facilitating learning though generating video is also important in this type of assessment. Showing empathy is vital as for many students this can be their first time creating a video for assessment. The learning scaffold is a multi-faceted approach in video assessment and depends on the type of the video being created. However, there are important things that educators can do to support learning: 

• Enable communication with students and check in regularly on the progress of their projects
• In a group assignment, provide students the opportunity to assess each other’s contribution to the project using Peer Review assessment
• Access, equity and inclusion are important considerations to help all students submit their best work