The blending of student-generated videos in an operating systems course

Andrew K F Lui, Maria H M Poon and S C Ng
The Open University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong SAR, China

Digital video is an effective instructional tool for providing learning content and illustrating concepts. Digital video storytelling turns students from media consumers into media producers, and consequently motivates them to take control of their learning processes. In this paper, a pilot study of blending digital storytelling into an operating systems course is described. Students in an operating systems course need to overcome the difficulty of abstract and dynamic concepts. The findings show that, through a highly engaging course project involving the production of a video for illustrating these concepts, students were able to reach even a metacognitive level of understanding. The experience was a successful and satisfying one for both the students and the course instructors.