Tag: Nutrition

A Quick Trial of 360° Cameras in a Practical Session

Find out the pros and cons of 360 degree meeting room cameras in practical sessions.

Roisin Devaney, Susan Lennie, Andrea McGrattan

Situation

This practical session was based around students creating a meal to align with the recommendations of the EatWell guide, using ingredients provided in the food handling lab. The session involved a short introduction, followed by time for the activity, and feedback. At the last moment there was a request to record the practical session, and therefore a 360° camera was used as a quick solution – an ideal opportunity to test the camera’s capabilities.

These rooms are not set up for ReCap, so having this portable method of recording allowed for the session to be captured. The camera was connected to Zoom so that a remote student could watch the session or review the recording. As it happened, no one watched the stream live, so there was no interaction with a remote participant. As shown from the screenshots below, the camera could cover the whole room without needing to be moved. It can also zoom in and out to focus on where the action was taking place.

Method

The camera was quick and simple to set up, and lecturers used lapel mics to capture sound when they were addressing the class. The camera was placed on the demonstrators’ bench at the front of the room, where it could see the kitchen spaces as well as the session leads, and the whiteboard.

All present were made aware of the device. It was relatively unobtrusive and didn’t get in the way of the session – most people just forgot about it. This is a bonus as it means the lecturers don’t have to consider what to capture at various points during the session. They could also walk around the room naturally rather than being stuck at the fixed point of presenting from a particular spot at the front as the camera would follow them.

Results

As a quick solution, it was easy to set up, and the predetermined settings allowed for much of the session to be captured. It provided a record of the practical session, though due to the level of automation in where the camera chose to focus, some detail and some sound was lost. For example, on some occasions, the camera would choose to focus based on an incidental sound in the room, like a pot being scraped. This kind of auto-selection would work better in a situation such as a seminar where everyone sits around one table with less background noise and more obvious turn-taking when speaking.

The camera also captured incidental discussions – as it was placed at the front where students were collecting ingredients, it captured discussions between students about what they were choosing to include in their meal.

It was also able to capture two areas simultaneously and display them side by side, allowing for an overview of the room as well as capturing individual discussions.

Other Applications

There are a range of applications for this type of device in a practical setting. For example, for a remote student, the device could be placed in a group of students so that some collaboration would be possible. This would allow them to be more involved in the practical aspect of the session, though of course it would not be a complete substitution for in-person attendance.

Though the session recordings are relatively long, once uploaded to Panopto, bookmarks could be added to allow students to quickly navigate to various parts of the session, for example the input and feedback.

Contacts

Roisin Devaney, Susan Lennie and Andrea McGrattan, Nutrition and Dietetics, School of Biomedical, Nutritional and Sports Sciences

Resources

Owl Camera

Art of the Possible Lightning Talk including a brief overview of this work at 24:22.

Case Study – Audio Commentaries on Client Consultations – Susan Lennie

This post is about using audio recordings of patient consultations in teaching. Commentary was added to the recordings by the lecturer to create a richer resource.

Introduction

This case study concerns Dietetics and Nutrition module NUT2006, Measurement and Assessment of Dietary Intake and Nutritional Status. As part of this module, dietary interview consultations are recorded so that the students can listen to these as examples. The FMS TEL Podcasting Webinar provided initial inspiration for what could be done with the recordings to enhance them. With a little more support, a new audio resource has been developed which adds audio commentary to the recorded consultations, highlighting various features.

Consultations and Recordings

The work of Dietitians and Nutritionists involves gathering information from individuals and populations on their recent or typical food intake. This enables them to analyse nutrient intake and understand dietary behaviours so that they can make suitable recommendations. Taking a diet history, or a 24-hour dietary recall, involves a structured interview with questions exploring habitual food intake, timing of meals, cooking methods and quantities. The effectiveness of the interviewers’ questioning technique impacts upon the quantity of information gathered and the quality of the nutritional analysis that can be undertaken. Students are working towards proficiency in these skills. Listening to recordings of these interviews exposes students to examples which will support in improving their skills when they perform these tasks for themselves. They can also practice analyzing the data provided from the audio recordings.

The recordings themselves are a very rich resource, which could be used in a variety of ways to help students improve their practice. The following task was developed, which required teaching staff to add audio commentary to the interviews.

The Task

Students first watched a short lecture on best practice for conducting interviews. They then listened to a recorded interview, by an anonymous peer, and made notes critiquing the effectiveness of the questioning techniques and determining if the quality of information obtained was sufficient to undertake nutritional analysis. Next, they listened to the same interview with professional commentary provided by staff, highlighting what could be improved and were asked:

  • Did you spot the same things?
  • Reflect on the comments and try to think about how you might use this knowledge to improve your own skills in gathering dietary information from service users.

This task was designed to allow students to develop their skills in conducting the interviews, and to reflect on practice and identify areas for development. The use of peer recordings meant that there would be a range of areas to comment on, making the task itself much more active than simply listening to a professional. Students were also offered more interview recordings to practice this task further.

Adding Commentary with GarageBand

A recording was chosen that demonstrated a range of teaching points. Having listened to the recording and made brief notes, cuts were then made in the original recording at natural stopping points, for example, after the participant and interviewer had discussed breakfast. It was important to allow the original recording room to breathe by not interjecting too often – this makes for fewer edits too.

You can record audio with a range of devices – Windows laptops can run Audacity, and Macs come with GarageBand. It is also possible to record audio clips on a smartphone and import them. When doing any recording, make sure to do a quick test first to ensure there is no unwanted background noise – just record a few seconds and listen back. GarageBand was used in this case, but the Audacity user interface is very similar.

The first 20-minute recording took around two hours to produce, but this time included learning how to use the software. The screenshot below shows how the editing process looks in GarageBand. The top half shows the three tracks that were mixed to create the final output. By cutting and arranging the various sections, it is possible to quickly add commentary and even intro music to the basic original recording.

The project file, which contains all of the information in the top half of the screenshot such as individual tracks and cuts, can be saved for later use. This is helpful if you want the flexibility to change the content, or re-use elements. The single stream of audio can be exported separately as an audio file and embedded into Canvas or the MLE with accompanying text and other resources to build the desired task.

Style and Substance

It is natural to worry about quality when producing an audio or audiovisual resource for the first time as the content should convey a level of professionalism matching its purpose. As long as content is clear and understandable, it will serve for teaching. Making a clean recording can be done relatively simply by avoiding background noise and speaking at a measured pace and volume. You can add a touch more professionalism to your recordings by adding a little music to the intro and using some basic transitions like fading between different tracks if needed, but there is no need to go out and buy specialist equipment. The content of the recordings was linked very closely to the students’ tasks and mirrored how they may receive feedback in future by showing what practitioners look for in their interviews. This clear purpose alongside the care taken in producing the audio ensures that this resource is valuable to listeners.

Conclusion

While at first it seemed like a big undertaking, a quick YouTube search for instructions on using the software, and then having a go with the audio recordings has opened up a new avenue of teaching methodology – it was a lot easier to do than it first appeared, and in total took around 2 hours. The software has a lot of capabilities, but only the basics are really needed to produce a high-quality, rich teaching resource. Commentated practitioner interactions allow teaching staff to draw students’ attention to key moments while remaining in the flow of the interaction, signposting how students can reflect on practice and develop their own interviewing skills.

Resources

Contact

Susan Lennie, Senior Lecturer, Biomedical, Nutritional and Sports Sciences