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Tag: Multi-media

Published on Leave a comment on Screencasting Feedback to Your Students

by Karen Nichols

Feedback Computer Key In Blue Showing Opinions And Surveys

Faculty Focus, a publication I value a lot, posted an article on January 8, 2016 explaining the benefits of screencasting feedback to students.  Dr. Ron Martinez, the author, talked about his solution to providing students one-to-one feedback about their essays in his oversized class.  He was seeking a way to give the personalization when he could not individually meet with every student about every essay.  Using Screencast-o-matic, he was able to provide that personal touch.

There are multiple screencast apps out there, and we offer Camtasia Studio to our faculty.  However, there's a bit of a learning curve and faculty have to trek over here to our office and schedule time in advance in order to use it.  I shared this article on screencasting feedback with my colleagues here in the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development.

Dr. Jay Todd, our Associate Director, has already experimented with it in his English composition class.  Here's his feedback about screencasting feedback:

I used Screencast-O-Matic to make a video for my classes yesterday, since I waited until the last minute.... It worked pretty well, although the default quality of the video it posted to YouTube was significantly lower than I prefer. The free version doesn't allow any editing and includes a watermark, but the Pro version is only $15/year.  It has a much easier learning curve than Camtasia, at least the recording part.

So it seems that reading Dr. Martinez' article and downloading Screencast-o-matic may be useful, especially if you don't care to type pages of correction notes.  One caveat from Dr. Martinez is that screencasting your feedback is not necessarily a timesaver. I hope the fact that you can work outside of office hours, does give you more flexibility in how you distribute the time needed to provide such personalized feedback.  Let us know if you decide to try screencasting and what you think of it.

(For more information on various types of helpful feedback, see Janice Florent's recent blog post:  Give Students Feedback that Helps Them Learn.)

Published on Leave a comment on Annotate Videos in MoocNote

by Karen Nichols

Since Inverted Learning is this year's theme for CAT+FD and we are having workshops and information on flipping, here's a free, handy tool for annotating videos that you may wish your students to watch in advance of class. MoocNote does require an account but it's very easy to set up and does not ask for all of your personal information.  Here are the steps to getting started:

1.  Go to the MoocNote homepage and click on Sign Up.

2.  Enter your email and choose a password.  You're in!

3.  Once you're inside MoocNote you may import one video or an entire playlist from YouTube by entering the URL.

4.  Assign your video to a group (it can be a group of 1 if you wish).

5.  Begin viewing the video and stop it at key points to use add notes, questions, a resource link, etc.  The textbox and buttons are located directly beneath the video you're viewing.

Add notes links hotkeys

6.  Once you've finished, return to the Dashboard and you will see all of the notes you've made on the right side of the screen.  In the center, you will see the option to Share the video with others.

7.  Note that your students or anyone with whom you share the video will need to create a MoocNote account in order to view it.   I'm looking into any plans the company has to make links available in Blackboard to view from there.  Perhaps that will be coming later!

We've experimented with this in our ETC (Educational Technology Community) virtual meeting and some of the instructors find this may be a useful tool.  I want to share a video with my French 1020 students to get their feedback as well.  Please let us know if this app is handy for your needs too!