Introduction
Last year, I began to use a simple screen and voice capture software program to assess and respond to student writing in both my fully online and in my web enhanced courses. I initially started doing this as a means of saving time and decreasing the strain of typing with arthritic fingers. However, I soon discovered a wide range of benefits for the students. In this presentation I will give a brief overview of what I do with papers submitted by my students. I will then look at my own history of commenting on student work, looking at my past methods and the impact and the effect these comments had on students. After demonstrating my specific approach on a student sample assignment, I will discuss the pedagogical bckground for the effectiveness of this approach.
Context and Problems. I have been teaching writing and literature classes for more than 20 years. A key issue facing teachers of writing is providing appropriate and useful feedback to students on their work. Students tend not to read comments carefully and have difficulty distinguishing important and large scale issues with their writing from smaller ones. The problems changed in nature and became more complex when students began submitting assignments electronically as WORD or .rtf files. While I could focus student attention on certain parts of the paper more effectively through use of different text colors, I began to write far more back to the student. Rather than a positive, students became overwhelmed with the sheer amount of comments and began to skim them. My comments also became more complex and formal as I fell into my normal "writers" style and diction. This writerly tone runs counter to my normal "voice" in class and is not conducive to connecting to students. Finally, my developing arthritis in my fingers began to become more troublesome with all the additional typing I was doing. I began, therefore, to look for a more effective means of providing meaningful feedback to the work submitted by my students that would take greater advantage of digital submissions while providing far more effective comments.
Approach: In the spring of '08 I began using a simple and essentially free screen capture software program from Techsmith called "Jing" to provide mini "video" comments on each student's work. Instead of typing extensive comments on to student files, I make an initial review of each assignment, highlighting trouble spots and typing one or two words at key points to remind me of suggestions I wish to make. I then capture both the screen (with the student paper showing) and my verbal comments, "walking" the student through his or her paper and providing my feedback as I reach the areas I have previously highlighted.
The finished videos, no longer than 5 minutes each (and in many cases much shorter) are then "shared" through a corresponding web service hosted by TechSmith called screencast.com that assigns each video a unique URL and immediately places this URL on the computer's clipboard. I then simply send a brief e-mail to the student with the web link. Students follow the link and hear my comments in their web browser.
Results: The results of using screen capture software and web based sharing of the resulting videos has been significant in two respects.
From a personal perspective, I spend far less time responding to student work. For a typical paper of 750 to 1000 words, I spend roughly 5 minutes reviewing the paper and marking areas where I spot issues. Since the Jing application loads when my computer boots, I simply need to click the icon in the corner, grab the portion of the screen with he paper in it, hit "Record" and start talking. Jing limits all videos to 5 minutes. The upload time for the video runs between 90 seconds and 2 minutes (depending on the length of the video). A small message appears when the upload is done telling me that the web address has been placed on my clipboard. I then dash off the e-mail to the student and simply paste the web address on it. In addition to the time saved, my arthritic fingers get a much needed rest.
More importantly, my feedback to students has become far more effective. With a five minute time limit looming, I find that I decide on three or four key issues the student should focus on before beginning the capture. I also am able to literally point to trouble areas or grammatical errors and "read" the problem sentences out to the student, further highlighting the issue the student needs to address. Further, I no longer assume my writer's style and tone. Rather, the "voice" of my comments on submitted work is consistent with the voice that students are used to hearing in the classroom and the writing labs.
Finally, student response to my comments has been positive and their revisions indicate far greater understanding of my suggestions for revisions. Students have written unsolicited e-mails to me to tell me how much they liked the video feedback. They were impressed that I had taken the time and effort to prepare a "special" video just on their papers. One even commented that he had brought his mother down to see the video. Perhaps the most important measure, however, is the significant improvement in the degree and depth of revisions that students are making between drafts and final submissions.
