ID Strategy: Screen casting

Introduction

There are four major types of multimedia we can use in our course — audio, video, voiceover presentations, and screencasting. Screencasts are considered more effective than a “talking head” video, especially when you are explaining a complex process as learners are able to both see and hear your explanation (Mayer and Moreno, 2003).

I have developed a demonstration video using screencast-o-matic and then added a closed caption file to the video. The final product has been posted on Youtube. I have applied Creative Commons License (CC-BY).

Instructional context: We have recently developed many of our courses using Articulate Storyline. Our learners are unfamiliar with the interface and several types of interactive components within the course. Therefore, I have prepared this screencast video to address this learning need.

Goal: The goal of this 3 minute long demonstration video is 'to familiarize learners with the interface of our course and with the interactive components of the course'.

I have ensured that the video is short and to the point to make it effective. While there is not a consensus as to how long a screencast should last, it is best to keep each video to less than six minutes (Guo et al., 2014) and Clossen suggests three to four minutes (2018).

I have chosen to make a visual storyboard for this video. I took screenshots of different sections of the video and then annotated with the messages I wanted to convey. No media and background music was necessary, hence I used a quick visual storyboard unlike the more detailed and elaborate one I made last week for my instructional video.

References

Clossen, A. S. (2018). Trope or trap? Role-playing narratives and length in instructional video. Information Technology and Libraries, 37(1). DOI:10.6017/ital.v37i1.10046

Guo, P. J., Kim, J., and Rubin, R. (2014). How video production affects student engagement: An empirical study of MOOC videos. Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning @ scale conference (L@S '14). DOI:10.1145/2556325.2566239

Mayer, R.E. and Moreno, R. (2003). Nine ways to reduce cognitive load in multimedia learning. Educational Psychologist 38(1). p43-52. DOI:10.1207/S15326985EP3801_6