Thursday, April 6, 2006

WIPTE 2006: Screencasting in Stanford

Ed Carryer - Mechanical Engineering - Stanford Univ

Used Acetate for 18 years - because loves annotations. Likes to whip out annotated overheads whenever students ask questions.

1989/90 SITN (Stanford Instr Television Network) started a course.
-- televised... ok
-- recorded... lots of review value
-- taught in an empty 200 capacity auditorium (similar to engineering's DL classroom).
-- PIP format

Students like it:
-- TIVO effect (watch later)
-- Review (watch again)


Revolution in Fall 2002:
- Camtasia (Persistent Ink)
- Co-teaching with a Powerpoint proficient co-instructor
- Tablet PC ended hand eye co-ordination issues with separate tablet (case for instructors who tape at home as against in class where sympodiums are available).
- Tablet Extensions for Microsoft Office.


Gave birth to “screencasting� in January 2003 (video captures of screen action)
- Started small – small class, changed a few lectures.
- Moved to screencasting entirely in Spring by notchng upto graduate class.

His choices in technology:
- 12� felt like an overhead, 10� was too small
- Felt need for more buttons, and need to turn of edge buttons.
- Recommends USB mics - on board soundcard is crap (just like our experience)
- He actually instructs in class wearing a headset mic.
- Produced Windows Media + Stanford’s Own Streaming Server
- 5 fps

It was interesting – when his Tablet crashed during the presentation, his keypad was useful to tab between windows and recover from the error.

Surveying:
- Paper Survey: Twice per “quarter� – After midterm and after finals.
- Other results – students hated ppt without annotations, because it felt “canned� and not that worth the while.

Versus Overheads:
- 96% students think that they Somethat/Strongly agree that the images due to TabletPC Projection was much better (67%) Somewhat/strongly agree.
- Readability: 95% Strongly Agree, 67% Strongly Agree
- 69% in-class students go back and review the materials (guessing, foreign students who are not that slick with English).

Next Steps – Future:
- Cursor Visibility (he turns on mouse trails to make the cursor more visible – we should do this)
- Alternate delivery – Classroom Presenter – Very exciting –
o Remote Screen
o Big Crosshar cursor
o Cannot use Camtasia and Classroom Presener at the same time because Camtasia wants H.W acceleration turned off and Presenter wants it on (otherwise becomes sluggish).


Questions:
Does he do distance ed?
- No because 75% of students are in the lab
- Lab and the community-sense

Podcasting of videos?
- Yes, he is probably going into it…

Attendance Problems?
- No problems… students like to be in class and ask questions in class
- Some people with class conflicts are taking this class 100% online, and results will be available at the end of it.

Gave a DVD of all his lectures at the end of it.


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