Hey team, Won and I are at the Sloan-C Emerging Technology conference (#et4online), and I wanted to share some ideas with you all regarding the utilization of audio and video features in our discussion boards. The presenter who inspired this post is Michelle Pacansky-Brock who wrote an ebook about VoiceThread.
Her institution bought a site license so that students could make comments on VT via phone, ensuring that technology wouldn't be a barrier to student participation. My thoughts are that our online and most blended students have both computers with webcams/microphones and smartphones. I think that in Canvas we don't need to rely so much on VT to facilitate an audio/visual discussion, as these features are integrated into the learning platform.
Michelle conducted research in her classes via surveys and discovered that when she as an instructor left voice and video comments, 97% of the students appreciated such comments. However, 75% of the students were unwilling to use voice or video comments themselves (as opposed to text comments). In order to encourage students to engage via voice and audio, she did the following:
She really made efforts to accommodate her students, emailing them personally with words of encouragement and even coaching students as needed. When she made these changes, her voluntary voice/video responses jumped from ~26% participation to ~76% participation. The activities themselves were the same, but multimedia participation was much improved.
Her Unit 1 getting started discussion was an ice breaker. She used VoiceThread and created slides with many famous photographs which have fundamentally changed or altered society. Some were very touching and visceral - perhaps even tragic, while others not so much. Students could choose the images to leave comments. These VTs were private for the class and not public.
In unit 4 she conducted a survey asking students how they felt initially leaving voice or video comments, then she made a wordle based on the responses. This wordle acted similar to a text analytic tool in order to assess the written responses. The largest word by far was "nervous". She also asked more quantitative questions, such as how nervous (based on a scale) they were with the discussion comments, and how do they feel now (in week 4)? She asked which method they preferred at that point. Voice was by far the most preferred response, then text, and last was video. She asked how easy it was to comment, and most said is was fairly easy.
So even in the first 4 weeks, student perceptions of voice comments changed drastically. I asked her what she did to prevent students from just writing and reading from a script for either voice or video. She says that she actually encourages it. After a few responses, she contacts the students directly and encourages them, when they are comfortable, to break away from the script. The students approach unscripted voice comments as a personal goal and they feel it is an accomplishment when they are finally able to participate unscripted. This approach really awards risk taking while still allowing them to have a crutch/training wheels as needed. I think this approach is brilliant.
At the end of the semester, Michelle administered another quick survey. She asked about the benefits of multimedia peer comments, how speaking in forums affected their learning experience, any benefits or drawbacks to this approach, etc. All the surveys that she administered were anonymous.
In our programs, I am thinking that perhaps we really shouldn't ever require video comments from our students. The presenter of this session had great success with voice comments, but not so much with video. Our students are mostly adult learners. They work all day at their full time jobs, come home to their domestic responsibilities, put the kids to bed, and perhaps by the time they actually get to their coursework they are tired and disheveled. This perhaps isn't the time of the day when they want to be "caught on film". They might simply be more eager to leave voice comments.
So here are my thoughts regarding action steps. A few of us on the instructional design teach courses. Between our team we cover the gamut of instructional modalities - traditional, blended, and online. Perhaps we could collaborate and collect data of our own which we could take back to the institution in order to promote multimedia discussions. Let's discuss what we can do to more fully engage our students in the online discussion.
Her institution bought a site license so that students could make comments on VT via phone, ensuring that technology wouldn't be a barrier to student participation. My thoughts are that our online and most blended students have both computers with webcams/microphones and smartphones. I think that in Canvas we don't need to rely so much on VT to facilitate an audio/visual discussion, as these features are integrated into the learning platform.
Michelle conducted research in her classes via surveys and discovered that when she as an instructor left voice and video comments, 97% of the students appreciated such comments. However, 75% of the students were unwilling to use voice or video comments themselves (as opposed to text comments). In order to encourage students to engage via voice and audio, she did the following:
- She surveyed her students in the first week and asked which methods for voice/video they would prefer:
- webcam
- microphone
- smartphone
- uploads
- telephone (only about 2-3 students have opted for this option in the past few years)
- etc.
- As soon as the responses were received, she make accommodations for the students.
- She slowed down the rhythm of her class:
- Week 1: Getting Started (no video/voice comments requires)
- Week 2: Learning unit - everyone comments via voice/video
She really made efforts to accommodate her students, emailing them personally with words of encouragement and even coaching students as needed. When she made these changes, her voluntary voice/video responses jumped from ~26% participation to ~76% participation. The activities themselves were the same, but multimedia participation was much improved.
Her Unit 1 getting started discussion was an ice breaker. She used VoiceThread and created slides with many famous photographs which have fundamentally changed or altered society. Some were very touching and visceral - perhaps even tragic, while others not so much. Students could choose the images to leave comments. These VTs were private for the class and not public.
In unit 4 she conducted a survey asking students how they felt initially leaving voice or video comments, then she made a wordle based on the responses. This wordle acted similar to a text analytic tool in order to assess the written responses. The largest word by far was "nervous". She also asked more quantitative questions, such as how nervous (based on a scale) they were with the discussion comments, and how do they feel now (in week 4)? She asked which method they preferred at that point. Voice was by far the most preferred response, then text, and last was video. She asked how easy it was to comment, and most said is was fairly easy.
So even in the first 4 weeks, student perceptions of voice comments changed drastically. I asked her what she did to prevent students from just writing and reading from a script for either voice or video. She says that she actually encourages it. After a few responses, she contacts the students directly and encourages them, when they are comfortable, to break away from the script. The students approach unscripted voice comments as a personal goal and they feel it is an accomplishment when they are finally able to participate unscripted. This approach really awards risk taking while still allowing them to have a crutch/training wheels as needed. I think this approach is brilliant.
At the end of the semester, Michelle administered another quick survey. She asked about the benefits of multimedia peer comments, how speaking in forums affected their learning experience, any benefits or drawbacks to this approach, etc. All the surveys that she administered were anonymous.
In our programs, I am thinking that perhaps we really shouldn't ever require video comments from our students. The presenter of this session had great success with voice comments, but not so much with video. Our students are mostly adult learners. They work all day at their full time jobs, come home to their domestic responsibilities, put the kids to bed, and perhaps by the time they actually get to their coursework they are tired and disheveled. This perhaps isn't the time of the day when they want to be "caught on film". They might simply be more eager to leave voice comments.
So here are my thoughts regarding action steps. A few of us on the instructional design teach courses. Between our team we cover the gamut of instructional modalities - traditional, blended, and online. Perhaps we could collaborate and collect data of our own which we could take back to the institution in order to promote multimedia discussions. Let's discuss what we can do to more fully engage our students in the online discussion.
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