Research Survey - Can the internet be used to teach skills to theatre

[Steph]

Hello Everyone!

 

I am a final year student studying BA (Hons) Technical Theatre at Derby University.

 

This survey is for my dissertation which is looking at how useful the internet is for teaching skills to people who work in the theatre industry. I am mostly looking at the usefulness of YouTube how-to videos and tutorials but I am also interested in what websites people go to for learning skills and solving problems.

 

This survey is looking at what how-to videos people watch on YouTube currently and what websites people use.

 

You can find the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/685QNH9

 

Thank you very much.

 

Stephanie Martin

[paulears]

I completed the survey, but I'm not sure at all; how useful my responses were. We get lots of such requests, and very often we're at a loss how anyone would quantify the results obtained? This one seems to generate a good chance of erroneous data because it has no context.

 

I, for example HATE Youtube videos because so many are total rubbish, by people who mean well, but have no experience or seem to be biased in one way or another. On the other hand, when I cannot remember how to do something in photoshop, for example - I Google - feather edge on inverted layer in photoshop - or similar, and then watch the video, skipping through to that critical 5 seconds to show me where the menu item is hidden. then I go back. That's not really learning in the sense I think you mean?

 

We'd love to read your completed dissertation, but despite students asking for help for over 15 years, not one has ever shared their conclusions!

[Jivemaster]

The issue with "the internet" is that most things are of dubious provenance. No-one has any idea whether the "tutorial" on line is written by the designer of the item or a 12 year old. The problem with all forms of distance learning is that sometimes the training, however well made, means nothing if there isn't the item there to practise on immediately. -Try reading the book for your phone without the phone in front of you.

[Ynot]

A case in point that's popped up here on the BR is this thread on flying line arrays (or in fact NOT!).

It's rather an extreme example on how NOT to do something, and to pretty much anyone with any real sense of rigging experience from pretty basic upwards it is very obvious it's by a long way the wrong way.

 

But the interweb is all about varying degrees. Unless the source material is from a reputable and corroborative site, you should really take it with a pinch of salt. But sadly there are way more 'how to' videos out there which might appear on the face to be legit, and may have elements of accuracy, but sometimes it only takes a little error to in fact create unsafe or impractical instruction.

 

 

 

[indyld]

As I actually run online courses in certain theatre related skills, I obviously only have one answer to the overall question. :-)

 

In this day and age, it is literally impossible to teach learners everything that they might need to know now and in the future and in every production situation. Our job as educators in the production field is to develop learners to be able to problem solve using all the resources available to them and these days that includes the internet. A cynic would describe this as 'teaching them to look stuff up on YouTube', but in reality that is actually skill in itself and some people find this easier and more effective than others. A lot of stuff that perhaps I would have taught in sessions, is actually better communicated in a flipped classroom environment where the students review a YouTube video before arriving at a session, and then actually do something in the classroom. I teach huge chunks of digital media this way (Photoshop, After Effects etc.) For more specialist topics or software with less 'public' information of the right kind, I make my own.

 

Just yesterday, I was in the venue with a student AV team and pulled up a link to a YouTube video that related to a particular thing that they needed to sort out in tech week - in this case, it was creating a dissolve loop in After Effects. I searched the video up (I already know the one I want) and emailed the link straight to the students from my phone, while talking them through a number of other solutions to other notes they had to respond to. We also have an institutional Lynda subscription but I have to admit, I don't use it a great deal - no one really has time to go through an entire course of How To's on Photoshop - they just need to solve a particular problem now. As the technology gets ever more complex and the availability of findable piecemeal information grows, the idea of 'learn everything and put it into practice' is long gone.

 

As an educator, I review all videos that I point students to and sometimes include caveats or things like "this is only relevant from about 3:32 and the last bit isn't very well explained but doesn't matter to you right now." I am under no delusions of grandeur as to my own talents BUT this environment does need educators to filter all the information out there and help learners to understand how it applies to them. After all, there is a lot of content available that never mentions 'theatre', be it related to software or lifting gear. Only the specialist educator understands how this relates to their subject.

 

I have a lot of videos on my YouTube channel and I hear from loads of people who, for example, have learned Vectorworks Spotlight using my (now quite old) videos. What most people don't see is that I also have a lot of hidden video content on YouTube that I use in my teaching every day, both live and online.

 

Hope that's some help to your research and also maybe gets some discussion going.

R

[indyld]

One thing I continue to discuss with colleagues, industry and pretty much anyone unfortunate enough to be near me ( and a potential topic for my own research) is:

 

To what extent are the limitations of digital learning in performance production real or perceived?

 

You'll find plenty of people giving the "It's just not possible to teach 95% these subjects using digital technologies and they are of little relevance" line. My personal belief is that this view is largely a matter of opinion, rather than fact. Of course, the more people that hold this opinion then the more self-fulfilling it becomes. If neither contemporary educators, and by extension, their learners believe this to be the case, then it takes on the rigidity of the dogma and becomes true.

[paulears]

I suspect she will never come back after her initial post. Sad.

[Ynot]

I suspect she will never come back after her initial post. Sad.

Very few seem to return, do they.

[alistermorton]

I think a lot of these requests are just to drop their survey link and hope there will be a response. Many don't seem to wait to see whether anyone has any comments about the survey (we've had some exceptions, though) - they may well be repeating the exercise across many online fora in a scattergun approach.

[paulears]

What I never get is why so many are clearly pointless? Is this a case of the bottom students realising they need some kind of research and just cobbling together something last minute - or are they genuine?

 

Sometimes I even wonder if they are designed to prove that poor research is worse than worthless?

[Steph]

Hi guys,

 

Thank you all for your comments. I havent had my notifications on to my email so I have only just seen all of these comments. I will reply to you all when I get back from work tonight. Thanks to everyone who has responded to my survey so far.

[Steph]

Hi Everyone,

 

I'll reply to your messages one by one to catch up with the discussion.

I did not intend to ignore any of your messages, it was just first post stupidity http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif. I'm too used to Reddit notifying me about comments.

Sorry in advance, this post is going to be long as I have a lot to say :)

 

@Paulears

 

The point of this first survey was to get a feeling of what YouTube/Online tutorials people use most often that are not just theatre related. I have been confirming some statistics I found in secondary research about what tutorials are the most popular not just with theatre practitioners but professionally too. These are statistics that I am using to introduce the idea of tutorials being a popular resource so I needed to make sure that my information was concrete. I do agree that a lot of people on YouTube do not know what they are talking about so we need to be careful about information selection however during my research I have found tutorials that come from professionals with useful information. These professionals do not always come from a theatre background but the information is still useful for example I watch a lot of videos by professional cosplayers as a personal interest but it would be very useful to a costume or prop maker.

 

This tutorial is from a cosplayer talking about making armour from foam and in my opinion is an example of a tutorial video done right.

 

 

So really what I'm saying is you can't discount YouTube being a good learning resource, you just need to learn how to choose the videos that you do use carefully. So far the best selection of professional YouTube videos have been more applicable for creative roles: prop making / set building / scenic art / wardrobe. So if you are looking at more technical videos I can agree it is frustrating to get incorrect information.

 

This is a topic that I am really interested in as I am currently working as a scenic builder so I have learned paint techniques off of YouTube that have been useful in my job. I also really like learning crafts and I wouldn't be able to do most of my hobbies (crochet/knitting/cross stitch e.c.t) without YouTube so personally I have an interest in this topic. That may mean that it seems pointless to other people who aren't interested in it but as long as I enjoy the topic that I am researching that's all that really matters to me really. I can assure you that I am not a bottom student, I have been working really hard the past few years to get the best out of my degree and I have been collating information for this topic area since June so nope it is not a dissertation that I have just cobbled together http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif.

 

Also if you are interested in the topic I will post my completed dissertation once it is finished don't worry :)

 

 

Thank you for your comments.

 

@Jivemaster

 

I do agree that the reliability of the information on the internet is an issue, this is the major issue that I will be discussing in my dissertation. Especially with written tutorials it is difficult to get a sense of whether the person that you are learning from is a real professional that knows what they are talking about. Most of the learning that I have done has been with the materials in front of me so that I can follow the tutorial while doing the task. I can imagine that looking at a tutorial before being able to do the task would be very difficult I will have to have a think about this as it would be an interesting point to bring up.

 

 

@Ynot

 

Wow that is definitely an example of a bad tutorial video. Yes there are so many bad tutorials out on the internet, for every good tutorial with valuable information there are probably a hundred tutorials with bad or mediocre information. This is the main challenge that I am going to be talking about in my dissertation - how are you supposed to know if the information you are using is correct? Especially for tasks that could be potentially dangerous but how are we supposed to stop people from following these videos. Luckily in that example people were outraged in the comments which would stop people from following it but subtle mistakes are more difficult to pinpoint. I'm not even sure if I'm going to find an answer to this to be perfectly honest but I can at least explore the problems to inform people http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif.

 

@indyld

 

Everything that you have said has been super useful, thank you very much. I totally agree that people using tutorials need an educator to guide them towards the most useful information. The internet will likely never be able to teach skills for an industry an niche and specific as theatre. Theatre is a lot of getting your hands on and learning from somebody like yourself but using the internet in conjunction with this like you do is possibly the best way that we can make use of the information out there. There is so much information on the internet from genuine professionals and teachers that it seems a shame to completely ignore it and waste useful information. If theatre practitioners could share useful tutorials and videos that are correct then we would have access to so much information. This is where websites like Reddit are useful with specific subject pages as people so tend to share useful information on there and people discuss it.

 

Thank you very much for your input, it really got me thinking http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif

 

 

 

I will make sure that I keep an eye on this page for discussions now.

 

If anybody has any suggestions for survey questions that they would have liked to answer then that would be very useful. I am potentially going to make a more focused survey to send out based on the responses that I have gotten.

 

Thank you everybody for you patience http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/happysmiley.gif.

Stephanie Martin.

[andy_s]

I see in my paper copy of the stage (purchased from a newsagent, although I do look at it online as well) that Rose Buford are now offering a whole undergrad learning experience on line, leading to an honours degree, not sure how that would work, details not included in the paper, but perhaps worth looking into. Are there any other full time online courses available in other subjects?

[indyld]

I see in my paper copy of the stage (purchased from a newsagent, although I do look at it online as well) that Rose Buford are now offering a whole undergrad learning experience on line, leading to an honours degree, not sure how that would work, details not included in the paper, but perhaps worth looking into. Are there any other full time online courses available in other subjects?

 

I think it's Theatre Studies which is usually the kind of curriculum that is easy to fit into a 100% distance.

[Robin D]

Well done for coming back and taking time to comment on the responses given Stephanie. Good luck with the dissertation.