Making videos as a way of learning: a project at the Engineering School of Padua University

In higher education, learning involves many capabilities and requires active participation and contribution by learners. Indeed, the types of jobs that appear every day have new knowledge requests and learners must become active creators of their personal knowledge, individually or in collaboration with others. Methods of active teaching and learning practices are becoming popular, even in science and engineering where, traditionally, teaching is mostly based on classic lecturing. This paper examines the implementation of a project of an innovative form of learning that was proposed to students in the School of Engineering at the University of Padova (Italy). Students were asked to perform a teamwork consisting of some original research on a topic and its presentation in the form of a video. The study describes the implementation steps and the results of this project and shows how this approach can represent an active modality for learners who can construct their own knowledge, integrate different forms of knowledge, and explore new communication channels that also imply various processes of knowledge conversion. Suggestions for a future development and replication of this activity, as well as discussion of critical issues, are finally presented.