NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 4 HND - Climate Change Extension (feedback)

For our Climate Change group project, we were tasked with gathering, analysing and evaluating feedback, discussing examples of good practice and areas for improvement in the collaborative project we created based around the climate change project's final video.

We were originally tasked with creating a media project (it could have been anything, such as a game, video or article) that informed a target audience about a specific topic / controversy.

We originally wanted to create an educational game project that would teach the audience about climate change and quiz them through the use of a variety of minigames. Unfortunately, this never came to fruition as we realised we wouldn't have enough time to complete it within the timelimit the project was due in.

Therefore, instead we decided to create an educational video, as it would be significantly easier to complete within the timelimit and would allow us to give more information about climate change quickly.

Our original target audience were going to be children, however, this soon changed after we decided to change our original idea of creating a game into the idea of creating a video. As a result, we decided to target the video more towards a teenage demographic, so we could give a more serious tone and explain more complicated information.

I mostly contributed to the project through the accumulation of research and preproduction. With the research I conducted I produced a large document detailing the causes of climate change, the effects of climate change, the processes of how that information was gathered and explaining how people could personally help lower climate change. I also researched more complicated topics for climate change such as the Milankovitch cycles, however this was not mentioned in the final video.

I believe I contributed effectively to the group through research and planning for the final video. However, I believe I could have done more within the group for the later stages of production and post production. While I did volunteer to do multiple tasks, these tasks were ultamately filled by another member of the group, leading me to do significantly less work towards the end of the project.

Overall, I believe that my group worked well together, with each of my team-mates completing their tasks efficiently and effectively.

The names and roles of my team-mates were:

Scott - who was responsible for creating the first survey to help choose a target demographic and form of media the final project would be presented as.

Ryan - who was responsible for completing the voice over and directing the rest of the group as our project leader.

Frank - who was responsible for creating documents such as the EPK (Electronic Press Kit), GANT chart and helping to brainstorm and plan the course of the project. Frank also created the second survey which was used to gain feedback from our final video's viewers.

Adam - who was responsible for editing the final project video and creating the visuals and graphics seen within the final product.

The production of the project went well as we managed to meet each of the project's deadlines and milestones effectively, with the final video giving a clear, although basic, explanation of climate change.

I think that the final video did meet our group's requirements as it managed to give a moderate explanation as to what the causes and effects of climate change are. Throughout a large portion of the project we were forced to work together over remote collaboration, whereas towards the beginning of the project we were able to work together at college.

Personally, I believe because of this the final video wasn't as good as we originally hoped for. Despite our fewer options of communication and the obstacales we faced however, I still believe we did well on our project.

Despite my belief that remote collaboration hindered our progress, both studio based and remote collaboration have their own benefits and flaws.

The benefits of studio based collaboration include:

Gaining exposure to multiple points of view to better come together for ideas relating to the project at hand.

It is easier to communicate quickly with teammates, allowing for more teamwork, collaboration and feedback on work.

While flaws of studio based collaboration include:

Typically, reaching a consensus or coming to an agreement on project direction can be time consuming and drag on longer than anticipated.

And often too many viewpoints can water down the message, as everyone may have different directions they want to take the project.

Meanwhile the benefits of remote based collaboration include:

The fact that less travel is needed, lowering costs such as transportation and allowing more time to do work.

And the significantly increased amount of flexability for doing work.

However the flaws of remote based collaboration include:

There is much less connection with colleagues, making it harder to work together on a specific project. 

Sharing files becomes significantly harder without the use of connected devices, however this can be avoided by using file sharing sites such as Google Drive.

Working from home can increase the amount of destractions around you, leading to lower concentration.

And finally, decreased morale as you are working alone.

 

Final Project video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9Cumc0fP9M

 

In order to gain feedback from viewers of the video, our group decided to create a survey, recording the viewers responses to gain positive and critical feedback.

For our survey we managed to collect 50 responces, below is their answers to each of the survey's questions.

Q1 - How informative was the video on a scale of 1 to 10? (1-lowest 10-highest)

• 1 - 0     (0%)

• 2 - 0    (0%)

• 3 - 1    (2%)

• 4 - 5    (10%)

• 5 - 2    (4%)

• 6 - 5    (10%)

• 7 - 8     (16%)

• 8 - 10    (20%)

• 9 - 9    (18%)

• 10 - 10    (20%)

Q2 - How well was the information presented on a scale of 1 to 10? (1-lowest 10-highest)

• 1 - 0     (0%)

• 2 - 0    (0%)

• 3 - 1    (2%)

• 4 - 2    (4%)

• 5 - 4    (8%)

• 6 - 5    (10%)

• 7 - 9    (18%)

• 8 - 7    (14%)

• 9 - 9    (18%)

• 10 - 13    (26%)

Q3 - How was the length of the video?

• it was too short - 4 (8%)
  

• it could have been a bit longer - 10 (20%)
  

• it was a good length - 33 (66%)
  

• it could have been a bit shorter - 2 (4%)
  

• it was too long - 1 (2%)
  

Q4 - How would you prefer information presented? (Tick multiple if they apply)

• More text based - 13 (27.1%)
  

• More visual based - 37 (77.1%)
  

• More audio based - 13 (27.1%)
  

Q5 - Were there enough topics?

• Yes - 42 (84%)
  

• No - 8 (16%)
  

Q6 - If your reply to the previous question was "No" please leave a suggestion for other topics you would like to know about.

8 responses:

• "It was yes :)"
  

• "I would like to know more ways to help reduce CO2 emissions."

• "The above is yes and no. It is good as a simplified presentation of a very complex issue. It covered most of the basics."

• "Runway greenhouse affect. The efforts being made now by governments to tackle the growing issue."

• "Wildfires."

• "Pollution in the waters."

• "Car's effects on the climate"

• "More could be said about government and large manufacturing companies' responsibility to reduce packaging and climate damaging pollution. Possibly discuss recycling/re-using items to produce less waste. Consider the impact of travel and online purchases from far away countries which create a huge carbon footprint."

Q7 - What was the best part of the production?

44 responses

• "Good visuals."

• "The visuals."

• "Animations and visuals."

• "The animation style."

• "How informative it was."

• "It was informative."

• "rainforest section."

• "The animation style."
  

• "The explanation."

• "I like the part of what you can do to change things in your life to help climate change."

• "The way the slides were presented and audio. Very concise, informative and easily understood."

• "The best part was how easy it was to understand, there was nice clean graphics and clear voiceover."

• "It was very well set out and very informative."

• "The best part was how much information we got in such a short amount of time."

• "Easy to visualise and clear information with little jargon."

• "How we can help with climate change individually was a nice addition to a video which was somewhat broad."

• "Visuals matched the audio presentation really well."

• "The ice caps section."

• "The range of topics in such amount of time."

• "It was easy to understand."

• "I believe that the opening section was the best part as it appeared to have the most effort put into it as the rest of the video appeard amore and more rushed."

• "I liked the rainforest topic"

• "The visuals."

• "Some of the Graphics, the voice over was clear and well presented."

• "all of it!"

• "The animation/infographics were good and creative especially in the rainforest part."

• "I really liked the graphics and visuals."

• "How well explained it was."

• "The topic of the video is great."

• "Images and information."

• "The animations of images were done nicely."

• "The best part was how each topic was split up and well spoken."

• "The information was clear quick and concise."

• "The section on pollution."

• "The best part was the range of different topics."

• "The best part was the graphics and how easy to understand they were."

• "The audio."

• "Loads of interesting facts."

• "Information well presented for all levels both my daughter and I watched."

• "The voiceover was very clear and well spoken."

Q8 - What area needed the most improvement?

43 responses

• "He said buring fossils, did he mean buring fossil fuels?"

• "Voice over could have been smoother."

• "Each topic could have been longer."

• "Nothing - all very informative."

• "The topics went too fast with not a lot of information."

• "The information given."

• "I felt it could of used a bit more information on a couple of topics such as the ice caps."

• "None, its excellent."

• "The delivery of the script, could have been more engaging and passion led. Visuals didn't draw me in."

• "The voice over needs a bit more work."

• "The graphics felt a little rushed so if they were a bit cleaner it would of helped my viewing experience."

• "A little more visualisation like showing/comparing the area (1 m sq m) lost to the size of a particular country or something simlar would be great. Visuals are definitely what keep me interested."

• "pollution section."

• "The graphics were nice but there could of been more of them."

• "the narration."

• "Give more ways to help reduce CO2 in our everyday lives."

• "The pollution section."

• "the graphics were quite slow."

• "The lack of visuals causes some loss of interest in listening toi the video so an increase in visual data or graphics could uncrease interest in the video and convey information more clearly."

• "the introduction could be improved."

• "The voice over."

• "hmhhh the transitions."

• "Some moving images would spice it up give it a little more impact, like footage of tree logging and forests burning, land clearings, traffic jams, over fishing, etc, if the brief was to make a short introduction to climate change then this had achieved that."

• "The audio quallity could have been a little bit better."

• "The lack of a pop filter and there could have been some background music."

• "Can't think of any improvements."

• "Needs to be more appealing Visuals wise."

• "The video was very vague, a lot of information was skimmed over. For example the rainforest segment. What rainforest is being mentioned? Also the audio could do with some work, although all information can be heard the audio could do with some cleaning up. Overall interesting topic with lots of potential."

• "None, it was very good."

• "The visulas and lack of information."

• "I feel that some quiet background music would help the narration to flow / sound better and give more impact."

• "The dialouge could have been stronger and more confident. Live footage of nature may have been a nice backdrop at times."

• "The animation style changed a little too much."

• "The area that needed the most improvement was the graphics on each section."

• "There could have been more graphs and statistics."

• "Some more visuals here and there."

• "More information."

• "None."

• "More detail on pollution."

From this survey, the feedback collected through the survey's results showed that a majority of the viewers were positive about the final video. However, there was also a significant amount of constructive criticism that could be used to improve future, similar projects.

For question 1, 10 people said 8 (which was 20% of the survey users), 9 people said 9 (18%) and another 10 people also said 10 (another 20% of the survey users) implying that the video was regarded as informative by the majority of the final video's viewers.

The second question was also shown similar high praise form the viewers based on how well the information was presented. With the survey results showing that 9 people said 7 (18%), 7 people said 8 (14%), 9 people said 9 (18%) and another 13 people said 10 (26%).

The third question also showed even more positivity from the video's viewers, as 33 people (66% of the viewers) said that the video was at a good length. While only a collective 14 people said it could have been longer, with another 3 people saying it could have been shorter.

As for the fourth question, the majority of people (37 people 77.1%) said that they prefered receiving information through more visual based media.

The fifth question also followed this trend of positivity as 42 people (84%) awnsered yes when asked if enough topics were discussed within the final video, while only 8 people (16%) awnsered no.

However, for those who answered no to the fith question, the sixth question asked them to elaborate as to what topics they would have liked to have seen discussed or elaborated on.

Each of the responses were different, such as "Ways to help reduce CO2 emissions," "Wildfires," "Pollution in the waters," "Car's effects on the climate," the "Runway greenhouse affect" and "The efforts being made now by governments to tackle the growing issue" of climate change.

Another relpy also stated that "More could be said about government and large manufacturing companies" responsibility to reduce packaging and climate damaging pollution," and to "Possibly discuss recycling/re-using items to produce less waste." As well as considering the "impact of travel and online purchases from far away countries which create a huge carbon footprint," which gave a significant amount of information of different topics that could have been presented in the video.

Next, the survey asked the viewer to explain what they liked about the video and what could have been improved.

The reoccuring areas of good practice included: 

• A clear and consise voice over that conveyed the information effectively.

• Great visuals when they were shown.

• and how well the information was presented.
  

While the reoccuring areas of improvement included:

• Despite being presented well, there was a destinct lack of information.

• Lack of visual information and too small a number of existing visuals.

• And more confidence within the voice-over.
  

There was also lots of constructive criticism such as:

• "The graphics felt a little rushed so if they were a bit cleaner it would of helped my viewing experience."

• "A little more visualisation like showing/comparing the area (1 m sq m) lost to the size of a particular country or something similar would be great. Visuals are definitely what keep me interested."

• "The lack of visuals causes some loss of interest in listening to the video so an increase in visual data or graphics could increase interest in the video and convey information more clearly."

• "Some moving images would spice it up, give it a little more impact, like footage of tree logging and forests burning, land clearings, traffic jams, over fishing, etc, If the brief was to make a short introduction to climate change then this had achieved that."

• "The video was very vague, a lot of information was skimmed over. For example the rainforest segment. What rainforest is being mentioned? Also the audio could do with some work, although all information can be heard the audio could do with some cleaning up. Overall interesting topic with lots of potential."

• "I feel that some quiet background music would help the narration to flow / sound better and give more impact."

• "The dialogue could have been stronger and more confident. Live footage of nature may have been a nice backdrop at times."

• "There could have been more graphics and statistics."

This gathered information is useful as it could be used going forward on future projects for use in more informational videos. Using more visual representation and having a clear and confident voice-over while explaining the information are two possible examples of future improvements.

Relating back to the original brief and context of this project, we were tasked with exploring the "democratisation of media" and the credibility of online information, as false information can be spread from unregistered sources and opininated individuals.

This can especially be seen in the topic of climate change, as many people falsely believe that climate change is a false construct, due to reading false information and spreading it to others via various media sources, such as Facebook. This is why it is important to check the credibility of sources, checking the reliability of information and to conduct wider personal research. This is to gain a deeper understanding of the elements whch are relevant to many different topics.