The Hellenistic World Digital Storytelling Project

Project Leads: Dr Conor Trainor and Dr Clare Rowan

The Hellenistic World Digital Storytelling Project (HellSTOP) is a project aimed at providing students with an opportunity to utilise their research experience, to develop their skills with digital technologies, and to offer them an innovative assessment option. A digital story is a short (3min+/-) personal exploration of a topic presented in video format that uses recorded voiceover, images, text, and music/sound effects to present a structured narrative. This medium is a proven and effective tool for communicating complex ideas and concepts to specialist and non-specialist audiences alike.

The assessed digital story challenges students to synthesise and condense their knowledge of a selected aspect of the history, archaeology and literature of the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (323-30BC) and to make it accessible to a wider public. This approach promotes the academic skills of synthesis, engagement, and impact, and enables all of our students (being a core module) to develop transferable skills in technology, presentation and multimedia communication.

Check out some examples of the videos created by some of our Classics students here!

Preparing Pre-Arrival Students for the Warwick Student Experience

Project Leads: Dr Kathryn Woods and Dr Damien Homer

This project is aimed at improving student engagement and experience before arrival at University and supporting a student’s academic induction. This e-learning intervention will seek to provide pre-arrival students with reassurance about coming to University and help them prepare for Welcome Week and start to their academic studies.

By working with current students - learning from and incorporating their insights, experiences, ideas and voices - this project aims to develop an online e-learning Moodle resource and supporting content (videos, interactive activities, quizzes, and forums) to enhance the student induction experience and to create a sense of a learning community pre-arrival. By completing the e-learning module it is intended that pre-arrival students will feel ready and prepared for student life and learning at Warwick, and that this will help offset some of the anxieties around the ‘un-known’ when starting their studies.

Such an intervention is important because students, regardless of background and with a range of life experiences, can feel apprehensive before arriving at University. This is especially true if students don’t have a family member or friend who has been to University, or have been unable to attend open or pre-arrival days before they start their studies. It is anticipated that international students coming to live and study in the UK for the first time might also find this a helpful resource.

Project Aims

• To enhance the experience of pre-arrival students, especially from widening participation backgrounds, for a successful arrival, Welcome Week, and integration into the student community at the University of Warwick;
• Develop a better understanding of the student pre-arrival and induction experience;
• Co-produce a sustainable, engaging and interactive e-learning module in Moodle and resources in collaboration with current students to prepare pre-arrival students for University, to support academic induction, and create a sense of learning community pre-arrival.

• To promote and share the project and its outputs with WIHEA members, the broader University learning community, and externally.

Using video technology for providing feedback to YA Mandarin students

Project Lead: Zhiqiong Chen

In this project, I will use the free online screencast tool, Screenmatic-O-matic (SO-M) to give feedback to my YA Chinese students on their academic writing. Researches have shown that students prefer video feedback because it provides clear and more comprehensible, in-depth feedback. This enhances student’s understanding, and it is personalized thus making it more engaging. However, in many of these researches, the video feedback is for guiding students through the marking criteria, showing how their marks are awarded, or providing commentary on the structures and the ideas of the essay writing. My video feedback is for Mandarin learners and will focus on language correction, as the language proficiency of this targeted group of students is not high enough to enable them to produce a piece of highly accurate writing. It is essential to give explicit corrective feedback on their language errors to clarify their misunderstanding. It will be extremely helpful when students are abroad with limited resources. This practise is also aligned with the relevant marking criteria in which the language counts for 70% and content counts for 30% of the overall mark respectively. Students will receive the video feedback on the language alongside the overall feedback on their structures and content and feedforward in written form.