Abstract

In 2019, as the crisis in teacher training during the pandemic loomed, academic writing tutor Dr Mike Howarth began exploring ways his BBC School Radio teaching techniques might contribute to resolve issues faced by HE lecturers with students’ lack of engagement with Zoom and Teams technologies. 

On the basis that ‘we are all broadcasters now’ in HE, during the period of the pandemic and after, the author began to use the video record facilities of the software and server capacity to investigate multi-media radio teaching methods of engagement, in his role  online tutor for each stage of the process of research and writing trainee teachers’ final year project. Finding an encouraging student response to videos demonstrations, and tutorial sessions with video feedback on their writing problems, the research was expanded to explore methods for application in general teaching across all subjects. 

A period of demonstrating education production methods followed: structuring online teaching sessions, organising activities and assisting lecturers to apply tried and tested techniques used by producers to gain and maintain attention. But, radio based learning was multi-media, a soup of the spoken word, sounds, photographs graphics and latterly video. Experiments with online events for lecturers and in conversations all gained interest. Finally, interviews with retired BBC teacher/producers, provided a baseline of experiences of 35 years of engaging and inspiring participation in active learning: interesting information, attractive presentation using voice, emotion and with the original precursor of PowerPoint – the Radiovision filmstrip.

 Examples of these element of the research were in published papers and with colleague Dr Anthony Basiel during the pandemic. For publication, the research is presented providing: first, a background of the BBC producer ideas and thinking driving the ideas for teaching in analogue technologies. This reveals the common issues and solutions teachers faced in the past in distance learning. Second, these ideas are then demonstrated in a series of working teaching video events. 

The process of wrapping these methods in videos for education is made explicit through in sections called Stages of Development for some videos. The reader sees scripts redrafted from ideas beginning as spoken English audio recordings, transcribed then edited in stages and the notes explaining the changes being made. The process reveals an exciting set of insights in the similarity between quality education video and live lecture presentations required in a hybrid teaching environment. Finally, the application of these skills in both spoken and written English as an education producer maps also mirrors how student writing evolves from internal thoughts to oral expression and finally into clean written English. The process is applicable in any subject. The result speeds up and improves what every lecturer already tries to do: encourage organisation of thoughts into clean English text and in effective oral presentations. 

All of these elements are evidenced in various kinds of video recordings online and offline, 50 in total. Each are transcribed, generating a total of 660,000 words, then summarised using edited AI for the text based publication. In itself, comparing the summaries to the live performance in the videos in the appendix demonstrates how to cook up a tasty multi-media soup. Links to the original material in appendices are easily accessed online in the Middlesex University Repository. T

he result is a reference manual of a rich variety of practical ideas for you to apply in your HE teaching, and of especially relevance in a post-pandemic hybrid environment. 

Ideas in this book draw on the combination of radio and video experience from the author’s career in radio broadcasting and afterwards, as a Work Based Learning tutor and trainee teacher tutor at Middlesex University. Eleven years of video consultation work followed at the beginning of video server development and internet video based teaching lecturer training at University College London. What follows is the result of intense activity during lockdown: apply these ideas in your real world hybrid teaching as lecturers for the benefit of students: we are all broadcasters now!
Publishers contact 
michael.howarth@mhmvr.co.uk

28th March 2025