Wednesday, 11 February 2009

Screencasts and academic writing

Anyone reading this was probably at the VLE meeeting today where Richard Stamp and Roger Heaton demonstrated their work so far on the Beacon projects. I was struck particularly by Roger's writing support screencasts: short films demonstrating correct referencing, compiling bibliographies etc. I think they could work really well across the board, and I wonder whether the University should think about producing some generic screencasts which could simply be copied into individual module sites. These could be supplemented by subject-specific materials, but this approach would at least prevent people reinventing the wheel every time they wanted to show how to create a correct in-text reference using Harvard, for example. The same, I think, could go for demonstrations of how to use library databases - I wonder how many Times Digital Archive films are already in existence - each representing a fair chunk of one staff member's time...?

4 comments:

Music said...

A quick search of YouTube reveals a good few attempts to do the same, some from UK HEIs - though I don't think any of them were as good as Roger's!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH1lzyn7Exc&feature=related
(OK but with a horribly pompous soundtrack!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyXT3okiRj8&feature=related
Interview format from Univ of Worcester - not terribly student-friendly, but an interesting approach.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwZJQDwX7c0&feature=related
Manchester Met's anti-plagiarism approach.

Note that all of these materials were simply released into the blogosphere with no regard for academic IP. The start of a Web 2.0 trend? Or just a few mavericks? Let's see how this develops...

Joe

iangadd said...

Yes, please! The first thought I had watching Roger's demo was this would be great for our School, except we're using the Numeric System...

...and yes, excellent point about creating similar screencasts for specific library resources. I've already done some rather rough-and-ready versions on EEBO and ECCO (historical resources much used by a number of our modules).

James Nicholls said...

Wow - what's with that soundtrack on the ITT Dublin video? Harvard meets Titanic in Camtasia. Zikes. I can see the benefit of the Worcester and Manchester videos - I think understanding why referencing matters is important, but as you suggest, Joe, students may be averse to sitting through the whole thing. There's another one here based on powerpoint. I agree that Roger's are really excellent by comparison - especially his trick of grabbing footage of him actually typing out the reference on Word (or is is Pages...?).

If we think institutional screencasts would be a good idea, then maybe we need to consider whether we'd want to go down the in-house or Web 2.0 approach. I've got some on Newsbank, Mediatel and the Times Digital Archive I'd be happy to share (though the last one needs redoing quite badly!)

By the way - Owl of Minerva was meant to be the place where VLE discussions took place, but the bird seems to be struggling to get off the ground somewhat. As there is some activity on this blog, I'd be happy to ditch the clunky name and change it to a broader e-learning site.

Anonymous said...

Thanks all for your kind comments about my screencasts. Institution-wide ones for generic study skills might be a good idea, but my films are tailored to a particular group of students who know me, with in-jokes and asides that engage them and sometimes, dare I say, entertain them. The YouTube examples are grim (particularly the Manch Met one where she looks at her script on the floor - incidentally Videocue, which is a cheap autocue, is good for this http://www.telestream.net/video-cue/overview.htm), and I worry that impersonal films might make students reach for the off switch.
Roger