Upon reflecting on the content module of my online course, I must say that I had a far more difficult time with the construction of the course than I had previously expected. I had not realized that so much of my teaching rested on the ability to give immediate formative feedback to students as they sat in my classroom, and this is not a luxury that is available to online learners or instructors using asynchronous platforms.
Upon reflecting on the digital story, which is located in my content module, I chose to use Videoscribe to create a brief narrative that links two of the short units found in my online course. I chose to use Videoscribe because it afforded a multimodal approach to communication, and because it allowed for me to cultivate a ‘teachers presence’ that students in a K-12 setting are accustomed to. Teachers in online environments often struggle with the complexities of navigating and cultivate a presence online (Anderson, 2001) and the purpose of my digital story is to contribute to this presence. Sound pedagogical practice helps us decide, “which modes, methods, activities, and actors are most cost and learning-effective” (Anderson, 2008), and the use of Videoscribe as a means of telling a digital story met these criteria.
The content of the digital story itself contained a brief summary of the Roman empire (the previous unit) and linked it to the Middle Ages which served as the unit of my content module. Through this brief introduction, my desire was for students to reflect upon the previous content and to see that it is directed connected to the upcoming unit. In my experience, students have a tendency to view content units as independent of one another, and through this video I wanted to demonstrate that there are direct connections between the two units. As Kress (2005) explains, determining “aptness of mode” and “aptness of fit between mode and audience” is best practice regardless of learning styles, and I believe this is why I chose to Videoscribe as the mode of communication. Students must be guided in the creation of useful “paths of meaning” (Bolter, 2001) that digital technology affords, and the use of videos, in my teaching experience, have done well to do this.
References:
Anderson, T. (2008). Towards a theory of online learning. In: Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and practice of online learning. Athabasca University.
Bolter, J.D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Anderson, T., Rourke, L., Garrison, R., & Archer, W. (2001). Assessing teaching presence in a computer conferencing context. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5(2), 1-17. Retrieved July 29, 2015 from http://www.aln.org/publications/jaln/v5n2/pdf/v5n2_anderson.pdf
Kress, Gunter. (2005). “Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge and learning. Computers and Composition. 22(1), 5-22. Retrieved, July 25, 2015 from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2004.12.004