eaching - Project 5- Internet tools, Apps & Resources€¦ · If you work in a professional setting you may need to ask around and use Internet resources to get started. It is not

Copyright 2014 United States Institute for Theatre Technology, Inc.

eaching

ideo tutorials are an increasingly easy and effective way to teach students, train employees, and demonstrate how to use products. Affordable computer applications make it so easy for novices like myself to create videos

that I now use them extensively when I teach lighting design. This article explores how I came to adopt this teaching tool, reviews some popular software applications, describes how I make one of my tutorials, and looks at some of the pros and cons of teaching by tutorial.

A simple Keynote file (above) with introduction graphic and examples of the intended finished product is a quick way to professionalize screencasts.

62theatre design & technology

s p r i n g 2 0 1 4


The Back STory

A year ago I found myself responsible for Software for Light-ing Design, a new course proposed by an outgoing faculty member. Because it had never been offered before, I was free to develop a syllabus that included as many aspects of com-puters and lighting design as I could fit into sixteen weeks. My new syllabus was not unlike a new employee training orientation—at the end of the semester I wanted all the stu-dents to function as competent assistants. Thirteen students enrolled, and I led them through calendars, visual research presentations, lighting keys, storyboard renderings, cue lists, paperwork, and light plots using such standard software as Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop. I taught the course as I had always taught lighting, leading the class through proj-

by David K. Warfel

ects step by step, illustrating on a large screen at the front of the lab how I use the software and requiring students to fol-low along on their own machines.

The class, in my professional opinion, was likely the worst I have ever taught. Students already familiar with the basics of the software were bored, waiting for the new ma-terial that would come scattered throughout the period. For those encountering the software for the first time, the experi-ence was one of constant struggle as they tried to keep up. Several students were so advanced they spent more time surf-ing the web than learning, while others fell so far behind they never caught up. Striving for middle ground, I tried in vain to keep students interested and abreast of the material.

utorial

I record the introduction after completing the technical portion of the tutorial so I have finished product to show during the introduction.


s p r i n g 2 0 1 4


The initial investment of time is roughly equivalent to prep and presentation of a

typical lecture or demonstration, and potential time savings are realized in many ways.

The finished tutorial begins with the Keynote introduction and recorded video of the instructor, adding a personal touch to a rather impersonal delivery method.

Screencasting captures your computer desktop in video format. Advanced options with programs like Screenflow allow you to highlight mouse clicks and other keystrokes. Here I demonstrate changing modes in Adobe Photoshop.


s p r i n g 2 0 1 4


In addition to these logistical failures was my growing dis-satisfaction with a pedagogical disconnect between the comput-er-based focus of the class and my experiential-based approach to teaching lighting design. Instead of integrating the art and practice of lighting design, I had inadvertently separated them—and the results were not positive. I finished the semester knowing there simply had to be a better way to teach the material.

Fortunately, the class was not offered in the following se-mester, and I had plenty of time to ruminate. Students were ask-ing for step-by-step written instructions, but I was concerned that the sheer amount of time necessary to create written guides for every aspect of the software was well beyond my resources. It occurred to me that some kind of video tutorial might be more beneficial, but my lack of knowledge led me to imagine

Screencast tutorials make it easy to illustrate software usage step by step. Because presentation is uninterrupted, it is likely faster than demonstrating the same concept live in the classroom.

Screenflow and other advanced interfaces allow you to capture keystrokes; in this case a symbol for the shift key is shown so students see what I am pressing as I drag an image.


s p r i n g 2 0 1 4


complicated over-the-shoulder camera setups and countless hours of video editing. I pondered the situation, wondering how to move forward effectively.

As the next offering of the course approached, I asked our college IT staff for help and was delighted to discover that many people already use video tutorials in their classes. The process is made simple by advances in screencasting software, also known as video screen capture. Over the fol-lowing months I built a sequence of video tutorials, and my entire approach to software training changed for the better. The classroom experience was transformed. Students not only passed the next offering but succeeded in producing excel-lent results. Now my software training is an asset instead of a liability. What I learned can also help deliver employee train-ing, product launches, and non-technical class material in a time-saving and effective manner.

Why ScreencaSTing?

Screencasting is a method of capturing images and audio from a computer screen or a webcam to create video tutorials. In-tuitive software makes it easy and fast to create professional-looking results, even for those without advanced computer skills. Music professor David Snyder, my colleague at Illinois State University, summed up the benefits of using video tutori-als: “It allows students to view information over and over or just go to the portion of the explanation they need to see.” No more lagging students; no more bored students. It is as if you can magically transform the student/teacher ratio to 1:1, or provide all students with a tutor to guide them through the material at their own pace. Student evaluations at the end of my course confirmed the benefits: “It was more efficient, and I found I both paid more attention and learned more with tutorials.”

The initial investment of time is roughly equivalent to prep and presentation of a typical lecture or demonstration, and po-tential time savings are realized in many ways. New employees can view videos on company standards or training policies at any time, saving training time. Incoming graduate students can be brought up to speed, and transfer students can catch up all by simply sharing the tutorials. Once built, tutorials are easy to integrate into other courses. Build them for an undergraduate

course, and they are ready for the graduate section. When the time comes to teach the class again, simply make a few updates to keep current and roll out the videos for the next group.

Screencasting also enabled me to begin experimenta-tion with “flipped” classrooms, a concept new to me but the subject of much conversation in academia. Cory Culbertson, an engineering teacher in a nearby laboratory high school, introduced me to the concept when he heard I was building video tutorials. Culbertson explained that flipped classrooms reverse the delivery of lecture and completion of homework in a blended (online and traditional) style. Most frequently, instructors prepare lectures via video tutorial for students to view and study at home. This frees class time to complete as-signed problems and homework, for discussion and student presentation, and hands-on work. (See “Online Resources for the Flipped Classroom” at the end of this article.)

Flipping a classroom allows students to digest video lec-tures at their own pace, pausing, rewinding, and reviewing. They can refer to them again for individualized help in the classroom when they are applying the knowledge. Recently I created a series of video lectures on lighting equipment. I paired them with an online multiple-choice quiz to encour-age students to view—and review as necessary—the video lectures. I used the newfound class time for more practical, active learning experiences with the equipment itself. Rather than falling asleep at their desks, students were on their feet wrestling with the equipment to create art, a much more sat-isfying and engaging experience for student and instructor. If they ever need to review the equipment information, the lec-ture remains online for them to watch again and again. I am personally still cautious regarding the benefits of the flipped classroom, as I enjoy lecturing and the tangential conversa-tions that come from live interaction, but I am encouraged to continue the exploration.

Screencasting is a key component of many online cours-es. It makes recording and delivering lectures extremely sim-ple. If you have already created a large quantity of PowerPoint lectures, screencasting can turn them into online experiences in little more than the time it takes to deliver the lecture live. Once you have the lecture recorded, you are free to develop other portions of the online course.


s p r i n g 2 0 1 4


The possibilities for video tutorials stretch outside the classroom to professional environments as well. Screen-casting could be a great way to record and save training procedures so that they can be easily accessed for any new employee or as an annual refresher. Tutorials might be an effective way to deliver shop or tool training or a consistent method to teach new employees how to use your company’s particular graphic standards and specialized software tools. Creating web content such as FAQs (Frequently Asked Ques-tions) or new product introductions is also simple with this method and can help make your company or school website more dynamic. Essentially, tutorials can replace repetition—if you find yourself repeating something, creating a tutorial can save you time.

chooSing SofTWare

Screencasting is not new, especially on university campuses. There are likely faculty members and staff on your campus who have many years of experience. You will want to check your university’s teaching support team for advice. I note that several schools, in the interest of promoting online educa-tion, will eagerly support (sometimes with strong financial in-centives) faculty training in tutorial building. If you have such a program at your school, the added benefit of local expertise could be just the thing to get you going smoothly.

If you work in a professional setting you may need to ask around and use Internet resources to get started. It is not

necessary to be a computer expert. If you can deliver a Pow-erPoint lecture, you have the ability to screencast.

I started my discovery process with an e-mail to Shari Zeck, associate dean of the College of Fine Arts and director of the Office for Research in Arts Technology at Illinois State University, and to our college IT team. Not only could they tell me what software was in use already on campus, they knew who was using it. I contacted colleagues for advice. I was sur-prised to find a wide variety of faculty using screencasting re-gardless of their discipline, mainly as a result of the increase in online courses. I also found online reviews helpful, as sev-eral websites offered summaries of multiple software pack-ages in one place. While there are many packages available, I learned the most about Screencast-O-Matic, Camtasia, Adobe Captivate, and Screenflow.

Many choose to start exploring tutorials with Screencast-O-Matic (SOM) because it costs nothing, can be run on ei-ther Mac or PC, and is incredibly simple to use. John Poole, a professor of theatre history, started using SOM for online courses. He simply begins the recording and then narrates PowerPoint slide shows with embedded videos. At the end of the session the tutorial is saved and ready for uploading to the course website. Snyder uses SOM to demonstrate his course website, which could be similar to instructing new employ-ees how to use a computer-based time card or specialized software. While recording, he narrates his actions and shows students how to navigate for different materials, resources, quizzes, discussion boards, and assignments. He no longer

Using Keynote and Screenflow makes it easy to demonstrate equipment and other topics in micro-lectures that students can view, review, and absorb at their own pace, anytime and anywhere.


s p r i n g 2 0 1 4


wastes class time for the demonstration, and students can re-watch the tutorial at any time. Snyder calls SOM “very intuitive and easy to use,” but notes that you cannot really edit your screencasts. My first foray into screencasting was SOM, which I found to be very easy to use but best for narrating simple slide shows. Features of more advanced software packages, like recording keystrokes and editing the videos, ultimately led me to pass up this free web-based software.

I heard many references to Camtasia by TechSmith, a more advanced software package that, because of faculty comments, I chose not to personally explore. Rose Marshak, a fine arts professor specializing in digital art, found that Camtasia reminded her of Adobe After Effects and, as she had plenty of prior experience with video editing software, found it quite easy to use with no learning curve. Cyndee Brown, a professor in theatre education without Marshak’s software experience, found Camtasia intimidating and switched back to Screencast-O-Matic. Similarly many used Adobe’s Captivate. For those with full Adobe suites this powerful software can handle about any screencasting need.

Early in my investigation I was directed by Shari Zeck to mac.appstorm.net, where I found a helpful review of ten screen recording tools for my preferred Mac platform. I came to understand that I wanted the ability to record from the desktop (what happens on my computer screen), the built-in camera on my MacBook Pro, computer audio, and a microphone. I also wanted the option to plug in an external video camera to eventually capture hand drawing and other information, and I wanted the power to edit the tutorials to add introductions, video clips, and pictures of the final product.

Screenflow, by Telestream, seemed to fit the bill and was relatively inexpensive. Listed at $99, I have seen it sold in package deals for considerably less. The supportive college staff set me up with Screenflow, and I used it throughout the following semester to build many tutorials. Screenflow was very easy for me to learn, though I did have some basic vid-eo editing skills already. Capturing screencasts is incredibly simple, and the advanced video and audio editing tools make it easy to change audio, scale video, add in clips, and build more professional-looking screencasts.

Building & uSing TuTorialS

Once you choose a software package it is time to plan for your tutorials. Like any lecture or demonstration, a lesson plan, outline, and objectives will help you get the most out of the experience. When the focus of a tutorial is printed documents like magic sheets, calendars, or contact lists, I often begin by sketching a thumbnail of the document on scratch paper. I scan the sketch into the computer (TurboScan for the iPhone makes this easy) and use that image of the thumbnail during the tuto-rial as I build the example onscreen.

Instead of recording an introduction and then beginning the tutorial, I most often dive right into the content, recording my work on the screen while I speak through my steps. Many of my tutorials are based in Photoshop, and I like to explain what I am doing as well as the reasoning and justification for why I make a certain aesthetic choice. Screencasting makes it easy to just “do what you do” on the computer and play it back.

In the beginning, I was too self-conscious and over-whelmed by the newness of the experience to record video of myself during the tutorial. Later in the semester, on the advice of other faculty, I did start recording myself and letting the stu-dents see me as I talked and worked. This is very useful for lecture portions, introductions, and conclusions, but a video of your face might get in the way of the actual software training. One faculty member asked, “How do you capture the enthusi-asm of the instructor?” Putting your face in is one way. I even had a student admit to making eye contact with the video of me! Another noted, “I think that it is just nice to be able to see the instructor, and it does make it more personable.” One note of caution. If you are a lighting designer like me, you may want better lighting for the recording. In more recent videos I added a soft fill light to my face and a highlight over my shoulder, though I still desire more studio-quality lighting.

Recently I also began to include video clips from other sources in micro-lectures, which can be easily done in the more advanced packages like Screenflow and Camtasia. Talking about automated lighting is important, but actually watching video of a rock and roll concert can drive the point home better.

After completing and recording the demonstration, I typically record an introduction and conclusion making use of


s p r i n g 2 0 1 4


Breaking the tutorials into short segments not only makes it easier to manage

uploads, but also makes recording and editing a bit easier.

Those familiar with basic video editing will find screencasts easy to edit. In this image from Screenflow, a timeline and video clips are available for easy drag-and-drop editing.

Options include showing or hiding mouse pointers, highlight clicks, adding an audible alert to clicks, and showing keystrokes.


s p r i n g 2 0 1 4


Keynote (or PowerPoint) and the product of the tutorial. This allows me to welcome the students to each lesson personally and show them the intended results before we get going.

After editing, which can be done quite simply or not at all, delivering the tutorials to the class can present a challenge. Faculty frustrations around uploading the videos are high. One called his tutorials a “nightmare to upload.” Breaking the tu-torials into ten- to twenty-minute segments not only makes it easier to manage uploads, but also makes recording and editing a bit easier. I prefer high-resolution videos, as many of the toolbars, palettes, and cursors in Photoshop and other programs are quite small. High-resolution video allows me to do very detailed graphics work but increases the file sizes of the tutorials.

Delivery through course websites is my current pre-ferred method, as the space is provided to me for free as a faculty member and access is limited to students enrolled in the course. I did reach the maximum storage capacity allowed by our university partway through the course and had to petition for extra space. To share the videos with other students (like my graduate students), I uploaded many of the tutorials to my personal DropBox site as well. At around 250MB per video clip, space disappears quickly.

Streaming websites like YouTube offer free storage, but may be publicly viewable. I admit to being a little uncomfort-able with the thought of my lectures and demonstrations being widely distributed on the web for free, so I only have a few ex-amples on public sites.

The reSulTS

There are pros and cons to teaching by tutorial, and they may not be right for every situation. I surveyed colleagues and re-quired each of my students to respond to a questionnaire so I could compare my own opinions with those of others. Both faculty and students affirmed my assertion that the student-con-trolled pace was the chief benefit. Rose Marshak simply stated that “students learn at their own pace,” while one student re-marked, “Having the chance to go at my own pace in certain assignments really helped.” This kind of comment was almost universally repeated, and the quality of work submitted bore

witness to the increased teaching effectiveness. Students industrious enough to download the tutorials can

even reference them after the course is concluded, essentially carrying the demonstrations with them and using them again as needed. Your teaching then does not end as the bell rings, but can continue even after graduation.

Teaching by tutorial is not without downsides. One profes-sor found that students were waiting until the last minute to view tutorials and were running out of time. The addition of on-line quizzes helped ensure students arrived at class prepared. John Poole remarked that most of his student interactions were now based on technical concerns. “I can’t access the quiz” is a more common comment than, “Can you explain the histori-cal significance of this play?” Cyndee Brown summed up a fear I hold when she stated, “I did not go into teaching to sit in front of a computer.” If you use tutorials for blended or flipped classrooms, however, you may find that you gain even more personal interaction with students.

Students surveyed were also not ready to give up entirely on teacher interaction, and there was a preference to complete the tutorials in a lab with an instructor or teaching assistant available to answer questions. There is also a risk that what you are demonstrating may not be the same version in use by students. If you created a tutorial for Vectorworks 2014 but stu-dents have an older version, translation issues may occur.

concluSion

I created my first round of tutorials intending to move the en-tire class online, but at the end of the semester I was struck by a very different possibility. Once the tutorials were built, it was incredibly easy to incorporate them as homework assign-ments for my advanced lighting design course, re-integrating the professional practices of software with the aesthetic devel-opment of ideas. No longer are they artificially separated, but now I can teach the why and the how together, and I can use the time gained to reduce a teaching overload or offer an entirely different course. I am now starting a freelance business and plan to use my screencasting skills to make web marketing and employee training videos.

“Your whole world gets bigger,” Cyndee Brown said about

. . . it was incredibly easy to incorporate them as homework assignments for my advanced

lighting design course, re-integrating the professional practices of software with the

aesthetic development of ideas.


s p r i n g 2 0 1 4


teaching by tutorial. “How you think about teaching gets bigger.” I liken the experience to a teaching renaissance, a virtual rebirth of my ap-proach to teaching. Teaching software by tutorial led to micro-lectures, flipped classrooms, and other digital teaching experiences that continue to transform my educational approach. I now have more class time for hands-on learning—or “eyes-on” learning in lighting design—while my students continue to gain necessary software skills for professional success.

I consider myself still new to the game, but already the benefits far outweigh the investment. v

David K. Warfel is a freelance lighting designer for theatre and architecture and former head of lighting design at the University of Illinois and Illinois State University.

SAmPleS Of VIdeO TUTOrIAlS CreATed By THe AUTHOr

Introduction to series of tutorials, “Software for Lighting Design.”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S13nUDfz81I

Part One of a seven-part series of tutorials for lighting renderings in Adobe Photoshop. This tutorial builds on previous tutorials in Pho-toshop and MS Word.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOGCz5CpGzY

A sample micro-lecture on conventional the-atrical lighting equipment.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw7mTGySFU0

OnlIne reSOUrCeS fOr THe flIPPed ClASSrOOm

http://www.appitic.com/index.php/flipping/resources-for-flipped-classroom

http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/flipping-the-classroom/


s p r i n g 2 0 1 4

Copyright of TD&T: Theatre Design & Technology is the property of United States Institutefor Theatre Technology, Inc. (USITT) and its content may not be copied or emailed tomultiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission.However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

Documents

eaching - Project 5- Internet tools, Apps & Resources€¦ · If you work in a professional setting you may need to ask around and use Internet resources to get started. It is not