Merja Kauppinen

University Students as Composers of a Digital Video

This paper introduces a university course in which digital video composing was used as a study method. The aim of the course was to empower future teachers to use digital and multimodal literacy practices in their own teaching. Students in education, 13 in total, participated in the course on digital literacies. The course achievement was measured with the task in which students composed a video in small-groups. The students’ videos were supposed to convince a pedagogical target group about the usefulness of a teaching method or need for a reform. In the last meeting, student’s videos were watched and the contents of the videos were discussed. The experiences on composing a digital video were also shared. In the last meeting, the students answered to a questionnaire on their experiences on video composing. After the course the students wrote a self-evaluation about their own learning. This paper seeks to clarify students’ experiences on learning of multimodal literacy practices, ICT use and course content. Most of the students reported that they learned to create and interpret multimodal texts. New ICT-tools were also learned to use. The study showed that video composing can be used to study content knowledge at the university course.