The Use of video camera in Educational Contexts

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1. The Use of video camera in Educational Contexts

A video camera has already been a familiar and standard tool to support teaching learning activities. Video camera has been used widely, such as to record the students’ performance in the microteaching class Benton, 2001; Brown, 2003, to help the students do presentation Liu, 1997, to record experiment objects Erickson, 1979; Heath, 1984, as stated in Rosenstein, 2002, in the performance art class Quigley and Nyquist, 1992, as stated in Rosenstein, 2002 or in physical education course Mohnsen and Thompson, 1997, as stated in Rosenstein, 2002, and to observe classroom activities Curtis and Cheng, 1998. Why is video camera widely used for educational contexts? There are a lot of features and benefits that the video camera offers which can support teaching learning activities. In the following paragraphs the researcher would like to discuss the features and the benefits of video camera. In choosing media, the teachers and lecturers should consider the media features that enable them to support teaching learning activities Edling and Paulason, 1972 as stated in Gerlach and Ely, 1980. The media should be able to arouse the students’ motivation, to encourage the students’ responses, to offer new learning stimuli, to give speedy feedback, and to encourage appropriate practice as remarked by Gerlach 1980. Here, video camera is one of the media which can fulfil those selective requirements. Yung-Hua Liu 1997, an English lecturer in the Language Center at Soochow University, Taiwan, conducted a video presentation in her English listening comprehension and Speaking classes, which in fact, motivated the students to learn 11 English. The video presentation here is that the students, consisting of four to six people in each group, select the topic they want to present, write any story script or explanation based on the topic they have chosen, act out the story, record their performance using a camcorder video camera by themselves, and then present their video in the class. The students, as Katchen remarked, could watch and evaluate their performance just the same as they could watch and evaluate other people’s performance on TV Katchen, 1992 as stated in Liu, 1997. The video camera provides the features to support these activities as it enables the students to stop recording, to rehearse their performance one more time, to record again, to redisplay what has been recorded, and to focus on specific actions recorded. By conducting this video presentation, Liu got feedbacks from the students. They argued that they had fun, became more confident, and could practice speaking fluently without feeling embarrassed or afraid of standing in front of the class since they recorded their performance somewhere else. Liu found that the video camera could arouse the students’ motivation in learning English, lessen the fear, and encourage the students to practise speaking English fluently. In psychiatry treatment and training, Berger 1978, as stated in Rosenstein, 2002 applied the use of video camera to record the patients’ nonverbal behaviours and to help the psychiatric students evaluate their practice when they were treating their patients. Here, Berger claimed that the use of video camera supported the students to do self correcting feedback. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 12 Decker 1993, as stated in Rosenstein, 2002 applied the video camera in job-training to teach proper behaviour in on-the-job-training of college students. The students watched a model’s performance and then practiced the performance as the model did. The students’ performances were recorded and after that they evaluated their performance by considering both verbal and nonverbal performance. Decker demonstrated that video camera features enabled the students to get speedy and vivid feedback that supported them to evaluate their performance. Quigley and Nyquist 1992, as stated in Rosenstein, 2002 used a video to help the students develop their art skill performance by combining video feedback and teacher’s evaluation. Here the video camera provided vivid feedback of the students’ performance and helped them cross check the feedback by comparing their own evaluation with the teacher’s. Similarly, Mohnsen and Thompson 1997, as stated in Rosenstein, 2002 used a video camera to document and to give a model performance as well as self analysis in learning process. In microteaching class, a class which trains students to be teachers in a small simulated class, the video camera has been used to record and to evaluate the student teacher’s performance Benton, 2001; Brown, 2003. The students are supposed to do teaching practice in a simulated class and are recorded. After that, they are supposed to watch their performance and evaluate their teaching strengths and weaknesses. Benton argued that, based on his research, the students were really able to evaluate their teaching practice and identify their teaching strengths and weaknesses by comparing their own evaluation with the peers’ and lecturer’s evaluation. This shows that the students could do their own self evaluation which PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 13 then could lead the students to be autonomous learners as supported by Nunan 2003. Autonomous learners are the students who are able to direct and to responsible their own learning. Nunan argued that the students’ autonomy in doing learning activities could not be taught, but be reinforced. Hence, the use of video camera to assist the students to do self-evaluation on their performance can be one of the autonomy reinforcement efforts Nunan, 2003: 290. Thanasoulas 2000 also states that students’ autonomy can be fostered. The teacher can foster the students’ autonomy by assigning students’ self report, filling diaries and evaluation sheets, and communicating persuasively as a means of altering learner beliefs and attitudes. The video camera has features that play audiovisual information. Once it records something, the record can be replayed. The record could also be played forwards and backwards. Therefore, it is clear that video camera may provide information about the students’ performance vividly and objectively. Here, there is a possibility for students whose performance was recorded to see their own performance. They could evaluate their own performance so that further self observation and self-evaluation could be conducted. Video camera is commonly found and used in microteaching classes. Therefore, in the next part, the researcher discusses microteaching class in general, then microteaching practices in Faculty of Teachers Training Education especially in English Education Study Program of Sanata Dharma University where video camera is currently used.

2. Microteaching Class in English Language Education Context