Role Of Didactic Films Made By Master’ Students In Developing Didactic Competence

Abstract

The objective of this research was to analyse didactic films made with the help of devices accessible to pre-university teachers and with a specific content for a field studied in primary and pre-school education. The proposal to realise didactic films using the smartphone was made to the students from the Master's Programme “Curricular Management” from the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca and who work as teachers in primary education and pre-school education. In these didactic films, the teachers demonstrated how they conduct, through oral language, the activity carried out by children and how they expose various contents intended for them. The films made voluntarily by students were posted on the closed discussion group “Curricular Management Didactic Films” on the Facebook social network of which their colleagues from this study program belong. We analysed the process of making films, the characteristics of the films (duration, volume of information), the filmed learning activities (organizational forms, teaching methods and educational means used) and the students’ opinion regarding the films, expressed in the discussion group and in interviews. These didactic films are useful to develop didactics competence of teachers.

Keywords: Curricular managementlearning activitiesdiscussion groupsmartphoneuniversity education

Introduction

In higher education in Romania, there is interest for ensuring the conditions for academic success (Cuc, 2019b), for increasing the efficiency of professional development, evaluation and self-evaluation (Stan & Manea, 2015) and paying close attention to the professional practice, necessary for the desired integration in the labor market (Stan, 2016). During the pursuit of a profession, continuing education programs are considered an efficient means of professional development (Manea, 2015), adult education being a priority in European policies (Răduț-Taciu, Stan, & Bocoș, 2018). There are concerns for identifying educational strategies for training teachers to promote excellence (Cuc, 2012), for ensuring the well-being in learning and for using regulation mechanisms in the didactic activity (Cuc, 2019a, 2019c).

In the master's program “Curricular management” from Babeș-Bolyai University, during which courses are offered, in particular, to teachers in pre-university education, the aim is to develop their digital competences, with the purpose of adapting the didactic process performed by them to students / current students, called “digital natives”. This objective can be achieved by taking into account the interest of the Romanian teachers for the use of digital products in training (Magdaș, Vereș, & Dulamă, 2019), as well as the fact that the Romanian students allocate large time resources for browsing the Internet, with various goals (Dulamă, Magdaș, & Osaci-Costache, 2015), use various methods for searching online sources (Ilovan, Dulamă, Boţan, Magdaş, & Vana, 2016) and have developed various skills of documenting on the Internet and exploiting the identified sources (Ilovan, Dulamă, Ciascai, & Maroşi, 2015). The visual materials from web sources are used effectively in the study of geography (Magdaș, Ilovan, Dulamă, & Ursu, 2018; Ilovan et al., 2019; Ilovan, 2019). Discussion groups in the Facebook network are a way by which the teachers in the university education facilitate the students learning (Dulamă, Ilovan, Ciascai, & Maroşi, 2015; Dulamă, Ilovan, & Buș, 2016), as well as their evaluation (Dulamă, Vana, & Ilovan, 2016).

In the activity with K-12 and university students, their tendency to use different digital divides is noted (Dulamă, Magdaș, & Osaci-Costache, 2015). In some studies, it is mentioned that their attention is distracted by smart phones and other gadgets (Grecu, Deneș, & Ipiña, 2013). Smartphones and applications adapted to this currency are used in field discovery learning, for geographic data collection, for orientation (Ursu, Dulamă, & Chiș, 2019; Dulamă et al., 2019). Smartphone was used to make didactic films in which several didactic materials were used in order to facilitate the development of the skills of future geography teachers, within a closed discussion group from the Facebook social network (Dulamă, Ursu, Ilovan, & Voicu, 2019).

Problem Statement

Students from the “Curricular Management” Master's Programme, who work as teachers in pre-university education, use smartphones for educational purposes to search information on the Internet, to communicate with students and their parents, to post visual materials (photos, movies) and information in the discussion groups of the students with whom they work and the members of their families. In this programme, the students share experiences, opinions and information that are useful in their professional development as teachers. At the beginning of their teaching career, we find teachers have some difficulties in designing and implementing the learning activities of pre-schoolers and students. In order to support them in understanding, designing and conducting learning activities, we have proposed to make short didactic films and to offer them to colleagues within a discussion group created on the Facebook social network called “Curricular Management Didactic Films” (see Figure 1 ).

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Research Questions

In this research, we propose to answer a few questions: What are the characteristics of the films made? What learning activities did teachers choose to film to give to their colleagues? What teaching methods did the teachers use in the filmed learning activities? How did the teachers use these methods? How was directed the learning of pre-schoolers and pupils in the activities filmed? What is the opinion of the masters’ students about the films made?

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to analyse the learning activities carried out by primary and preschool teachers together with several pupils from the groups they work with, as well as the films made. In order to achieve the proposed purpose, in the year 2019, within the project “Capitalizing on advanced technologies within the support materials for teaching-learning in university education”, experimental activities were organized and filmed.

Research Methods

Findings

Conclusion

The development of the IT technology allowed that teachers from pre-university education in Romania could make didactic films with the help of smartphone in which they present the learning activities that they carry out with the pre-schoolers and with the students. The didactic films posted in a closed discussion group, intended for the master’s students of a program of university studies in the field of educational sciences, provide information on how teachers conceive and lead the process of children's learning. It is found that the teachers have a lot of creativity in designing the means of education and professional competence of higher level in organizing the learning activities, these being diverse regarding the form of organization, methods and didactic procedures, means used. We notice the teachers' preference to involve children in activities based on exercises and didactic games, in particular, mathematics games, activities that they manage step by step, ensuring an optimal learning environment.

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