Georgia College’s Diverse Teaching Video Clubs Boost Peer Collaboration
Teaching video clubs are an effective way for educators, and aspiring educators, to collaborate.
By watching videos of peers’ teaching practice, teacher candidates receive helpful feedback and ideas for classroom improvement.
And when these teaching video clubs are diverse, the stronger the learning experience.
At the recent American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) 74th Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Georgia College Professors Roddran Grimes and Stephen Wills presented Diversifying the Video Club Experience for Teacher Preparation.
Undergraduates and MAT candidates at Georgia College worked collaboratively on video club teams analyzing each other’s use of high-leverage teaching practices. Video clubs were implemented via the Edthena video observation platform.
Check out the video of the presentation above, or keep reading for highlights about diversifying teaching video clubs, including successes and suggestions.
Bringing far away peers closer together through teaching video clubs
Georgia College is in Milledgeville, Georgia, a rural, spread-out community.
Dr. Stephan Wills, professor for the college’s Master of Arts and Teaching Students program, described, “Our MAT program is spread out all throughout the state that [we needed] some way to get the students collaborating together.”
With much of the learning taking place online and sometimes asynchronously, it was important for teaching students to be able to interact and learn with and from each other.
In addition to geographic distance, teaching students range in age, gender, and ethnicity.
“We wanted to combine the groups so that they would feel comfortable collaborating with diverse peers. [S]ometimes we get in our own little silos of people that we work with and we need to see what other school systems are doing, see what teachers from different areas and different ages, different ethnicities [are doing]. We need to collaborate,” emphasized Dr. Roddran Grimes, Associate Professor of Special Education at Georgia College.
Setting up diverse video teaching clubs
Professors Grimes and Wills combined students from their Bachelor’s and Master’s teaching programs and created small, heterogenous groups.
“The cool thing about Edthena was that it allowed us to share the videos within groups,” remarked Professor Grimes.
With Edthena Video Coaching, distanced teaching students from different teaching programs can collaborate.
Being able to view videos of others’ teaching practices, undergraduate and graduate students can learn from each other and improve their own teaching.
One Bachelor’s program teaching student said, “Watching other teachers teach is the most impactful for me because … until you actually go through and see it, you don’t really understand the impact that [a teaching move] has either on the class or in your teaching.”
Suggestions for amplifying the teaching video club learning
Professors Grimes and Wills found success in aiming to diversify their teaching students’ video clubs.
In a post-program survey, students positively commented on the enhanced ability to learn from each other.
The diversity within teaching video club groups allowed for undergraduate students to learn from the experience of MAT students. Older teaching students also learned more uses for classroom technology.
The success of the diverse teaching video clubs surfaced several strategies that the professors reflected on in the presentation.
Here are 2 suggestions Professor Grimes noted for diversifying your teaching video clubs:
- To strengthen your teaching video club, Professor Grimes suggested creating a self-reflection form and peer debriefing form for after watching uploaded teaching videos.Check out minute 13 of the presentation video for sample questions for peer video debriefing!
- Professor Grimes also suggested having peers score each other on a rubric of high leverage practices.Within the Edthena Video Coaching platform, feedback can be aligned to Leveled Indicators.
Teaching video clubs support learning and teaching improvement
When aspiring teachers learn from each other, they can improve their own teaching practice.
Even more learning happens when teaching students can get more diverse feedback and ideas from others of different places, experiences, and identities.
To learn more about the ways Georgia College professors diversified their teaching video clubs, watch the full presentation above.
To learn more about video coaching best practices from Edthena partners, check out this blog post about Keller ISD’s teacher leadership pathway.
