I really appreciate the thoroughness of your feedback Sue. My responses are in purple between your comments/suggestions.
"I watched on my iPhone to about the halfway mark but no questions came up. What is the time stamp on the first one? I'm not sure if it's working correctly or not. I know you're sensitive to participants' desire to use their time well, so here's what I might do (learned in a video production course) especially if this is your first time using a new technology."
The first interaction (a multiple choice review question) is at 2:24. The video is supposed to pause (it does for me on computer and Samsung phone-Chrome browser). What may be the problem is I left it at the default position (top left corner) and it's not visible enough as it sits overtop of the red letter "E" on the stage. Missed that. I'll doublecheck all the positions when I do my edits.
"1) Expect glitches so create a way for users to test for them very early. You could, for instance, put a brief 'production path' test at the very beginning overlying the opening title. In the text intro to the activity, say what to expect & when, how to tell if it's working, & ask for a response either way in a special 'production path' thread or forum. Make sure to tests all functions the (eg. -- question appears, answer is accepted, feedback if used is provided, process can be skipped or not as you wish). That way the participants will not have to watch beyond the 30 sec mark before knowing if the technology is working on their device. You can't possibly test them all so enlist the help of the group."
I'll try that. I had planned to create a document to explain how the interactive video works and what they would see - BUT - I hadn't thought of embedding this in the video. I'll try it and see how it looks/works.
"(2) Don't assume because the first one worked, they all will. Providing a list of the time stamps of all subsequent questions can give those who want to jump ahead a way to do so. Some may have seen this TedTalk & may not want to watch it all again. Others may like to preview and work back & forth. Knowing where the questions are can help them stay engaged. There may be a few hot shots who on their own will take on the role of tech previewers & send you feedback. You can thank anyone who does that (e.g. sends you a message or posts twice in the production path test thread) with a surprise merit badge. They do wonders for morale as I learned when my brother sent them to me when I was in hospital last year!"
I love the idea of the merit badge for pretesting. We talked about the impact of simple digital badges before we integrated them into the last Facilitating Learning Online workshop - it surprises me how much I like them too.
I had already started working on the transcript that lists the events (questions/statements) after your suggestion in our Collaborate session on Friday - thanks! And TED Talks provide a really useful, clickable text transcript of the talk which I was going to reference (include the link) in my transcript.
"That's my 2 bits worth for today. As for the video, it must be several years old ... Interesting that the audience was so receptive to her results (they even applauded the stats). I'm not sure this far post Coursera start-up if her results would go unchallenged as indicators of successful learning. And now if you want a certificate I think you have to pay, so it's moved from free to freemium. So much for altruism in higher ed.
-Sue :-)
PS One final note -- you may want to check with your campus copyright people to be sure the TT copyright is not infringed by editing their video in this way. The statement of what one can/cannot do without the speaker's permission is quite limiting, but our fair use for education regulations may supersede that. "
I've done some poking around on the Internet to check any critical responses to her somewhat excessive claims for international educational transformation, etc. and haven't found anything really coherent / cogent yet but I'll keep trying. There must have been some kickback to this video. If I can't find anything good, I'll bet some of my first participants will. Or I'll blog / tweet to see what I can elicit from the cloud ;-)
Surprising to me that so few people question anything that comes with a research reference. I'm planning to review her cited articles for some follow-up discussion about the "value" of educational research.
And yes, it's "freemium" now. And it never was "open" as you have always had to sign away all your rights to any data they could collect from your registration, connection, and activity in a course. If you produced anything in response to course questions/assignments, it was theirs. Yup, I'm hoping for lots of good discussion about the fact that "free" never is and that people who claim to want to provide "quality education" to the world have different ideas about quality than we might have. Lots of issues to think about but Coursera MOOCs are still very useful to many people. We'll explore that too.
And, as to copyright, I thought I was OK because I was using the streaming version of their video and I knew that Ted Talks have a Creative Commons license so educators can use them easily (https://www.ted.com/about/our-organization/our-policies-terms/ted-talks-usage-policy).. Darn!!!!!!! I just went back and reviewed the terms of the "BY NC ND" and it won't work - you're right. DARN!!! The ND specifically states that I can't do overlays - I thought I was in compliance because I wasn't changing the actual video.
But - I'm not defeated. I'm going to embed this with questions in Vialogues which will allow me to add bookmarks with questions and adds a discussion forum underneath. Stay tuned for Version 2!
But I guess we're done so I'll keep working on it.
Thanks again....SylviaR
