Before blogging SSOL - Screencast Supported Open Learning?, I emailed a cut down version of the post to a few colleagues. The resulting replies led to a couple of follow up thoughts and prompted a few memories of related things past...
In particular, it seems that Juanita Foster-Jones is part of a team in the OU library who is "currently involved in a project which has been looking at screen capture software as a medium for delivering information skills training". [Quoting from a personal email in a blog is not something I'm too comfortable with at the moment..however, by doing so, the public consequences of such an action may force me to think about the ethics of such an act more deeply...]
Juanita mentioned looking at Macromedia Captivate, Camtasia and Viewlet Builder for producing screencast equivalents. (Just for completeness, I'll mention the Windows Media Encoder too.) Free demo downloads of these products are available from the links provided, and can also be found quite frequently on cover mounted CD-ROMs/DVDs on the monthly computer magazines.
It also seems that I missed a talk on this very topic at this year's Tracking Technology for Academic Advantage (TTAA) day. (For those of you with OU-SAMS access, here's the programme.)
The presentation in question was given by Steve Armstrong on the topic of Using animation for students’ software guides - moving away from paper in practice. This describes the use of Viewlets to provide an eSoftware guide for a project management tool described in M865.
When I saw the abstract, I recalled having heard about E-Software guides when they were trialled a few years ago for this course, as it happens: The Why, What and How of E-Software Guides.
Quite a few of the courses I work on require students to use software, and for some time i've been thinking about potential alternatives along the lines of a screencast. This blog is in part keeping track of my thinking on how best to do this given: a) how we've done it in previous OU courses; b) how the community is evolving related techniques currently.
The screencast (which to me is animated screen capture + informal narration) fits the qay I'd like to engage with students well, so it will be interesting to see how the 'old' (now!) M865 E-Software Guide and the new lLibrary Information Literacy courses differ in style.
I'm not sure if the low producation values and informal narration of a screencast are acceptable for purchased course material, but I do think they are effective in 2 areas:
1) If the user has some mental model or prior understanding of how the software/web application works in general and you want to show them how an advanced feature works. (An example of this would be an animated hint of the day. I get really irritated by popups showing these when starting particular software applications becuase I don't necessarily get the point/power of the feature I'm being told about, but if I had a 1 minute screencast demonstrating how powerful a particular feature was, I think I'd be more tempted to pay heed.
2) Currently, we typically give students a list of instructions about how to perform some on-screen task, say, but the student doesn't necessarily know where the instruction is going. The screencast is a quick, efficient and visual way of saying "here's what you're gonna do". It sets the scene beautifully I think, although it probably wouldn't work so well for me without the informal narration...(the transcript for hard-of-hearing students would look very poor though!)
Juanita also raised a few intersting points, which I shall (uncomfortably) log (sic here):
"There are some issues however. Most of these produce outputs as flash files, and flash is not very accessible. Captivate does have some accessibility features in that it allows you to add keyboard shortcuts for some of the operations, and you can also add text which screen readers can read, but you do need to consider this when using it. ... However you may find that you have to provide an alternative for those that need it.
"You also need to be aware of file size. I think depending on what you have in your session, it can vary the size of the file, and this might be an issue for students and ALs who do not have broadband (figures quoted at one of the TTAA day presentation mentioned that only 42% of ALS had broadband in 2004).
"I think as well there are issues over consistency of style, and indeed over the time entailed to create these products. I produced a 10 minute example, which I added as many of the interactive features as I could as an example of what the product could do. This took quite a bit of time. I think as well for more detailed items you may want/need to invest time in storyboarding before you go ahead, and then there is the time getting to grips with the product...