This assignment aligns with the learning objectives in that it trains students to individually search for information about the writer, artist or cultural phenomenon they signed up for at the beginning of the class. It aims to have students select the most relevant and important information about the subject they pick. This skill set is especially important in a digital age, when information is widely accessible. So, instead of teaching students historical and factual information they could easily access online, it’s more important to have students learn to collect and assess the information they find, and choose the most important and relevant information to share with their classmates. In this process, they learn to comprehend and effectively apply knowledge of contemporary Chinese culture and history to describe and analyze Chinese writers, dancers, singers, movie stars, fashion trends, etc. This assignment very much aligns with the objective of the class.

Janice’s example serves as a great showcase:

1. She covers good information on the artist and answers these important questions: why is he significant and worth studying?; what makes him special?; how is he situated in Chinese music industry/history?; and what is his music style? Through Janice’s summary, she identifies his impact in Chinese music and in general the popular cultural industry.
2. She then incorporates very good critical analysis with a few music videos she chooses. In these analysis, she demonstrates her abilities to use the vocabulary of literary and cultural criticism to interpret Chinese cultural phenomena. Her analysis is superb, as she elaborates on the messages/themes, color combinations, camera angles, clothes, etc in the music videos, with these evidence she comes up with a key argument of each music video, similar to writing an analytical paper.  

Dr. Li has built up a peer review process for this weekly presentation assignment for three reasons: 1) these videos made by the students serve as great instructional materials, and they can add multiple voices and perspectives to the class; 2) the selective information would be more attractive to students as students often know their peers’ tastes better; 3) the peer review process is supposed to be interactive, which can increase some participation for an online asynchronous class.  

Here is the weekly response peer review google form. Every Monday, the presenter will submit to the Professor their presentation video link, then the Professor posts on BB and has the class watch and review on this Google Form by the end of the week.

Since the peer review is anonymous, it usually gets quite a fair number of comments and responses. It increases the class’s interaction and reduces the grading load for instructors. With this form, the instructor can easily calculates an average grade as well as providing different useful comments to the student, like this:  

Dr. Li often takes students’ comments into consideration and grades this as part of the participation grade. She informs them at the beginning of the semester, so most of them have projected sincerity and carefulness when reviewing their classmates’ presentation videos. This assignment engages students from the making process to the review process.  

Video projects are one of the most powerful channels to have instant attention.  By combining moving pictures, sound and text, videos can pack a large amount of information into a compact deliverable in terms of time and size.  The popularization of mobile devices maximizes the video’s potential.  The burst of TicTok and other video-based social media has proved the video’s influence on audience engagement.

In the context of classroom, video presentation wins against other formats because the most important content is already pulled out directly in front of audience with digestible, persuasive and efficient display.   Presenters can use videos to inform the audience, demonstrate learning results, support/argue a perspective, or even inspire the peers to take an action!

However, not every video presentation can achieve high attention.  In addition to topic selection for a target audience, you can also use these tips to increase engagement: