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Best Practices in Screencasting
This site provides individuals with information about how to design tutorials effectively, information on how to measure the effectivenes of tutorials, as well as some information on screencasting and video sites. These intial postings are the result of the work done by members of our project, but we welcome any and all information pertinent to better and more effective tutorial design.
1. ANTS Guidelines for Designing Animated Tutorials
1. ANTS Guidelines for Designing Animated Tutorials
ANTS provides people with Guidelines for Designing Animated Tutorials. These guidelines work to ensure that each tutorials is (a) substantive enough to be useful to all, (b) highly viewable, and (c) easily exchangeable. Many have commented on their usefulness and are a good starting point for anyone who wants some clues to better design.2. Google Analytics and .swf tutorials screencast. Created by Paul Betty, ANTS project member.
This screencast examines how to track usage statistics of your .swf tutorials using Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free service that allows you to track usage statistics of your entire website. However, to track use and downloads of non HTML files requires a small amount of programming and modification of source files. This screencast details how Google Analytics works, and describes the necessary steps needed to track .swf files (the most common output of screencasting software). Examples for Adobe Captivate 3, Qarbon Viewlet Builder 5, and Camtasia Studio 5 are included.3.Publishing Adobe Captivate files on YouTube article from Adobe.com
4. Adding Surveys to Tutorials by Richard Baer ANTS Team Member
Most video hosting services, including Youtube, do not accept the .swf file format. This quick overview explains how and why you need to convert your .swf tutorials to digital video for optimal performance using a third party video hosting service. Note: The ANTS project members handle all .swf to digital video conversions for tutorials submitted to ANTS. This allows our volunteers to focus on creating tutorials and minimizes the time and work requirements placed upon them. The ANTS project is continually exploring new ways to deliver screencasts, and will soon offer access to a variety of source files, .swf, and digital video via our multiple web interfaces.
A good way to see how effective a tutorial is, is by adding a survey at the end of it. You can get viewers to give you feedback, so next time you design your learning object it is more effective. Richard Baer - of the ANTS team, demonstrates how this can be done in his CINAHL Alerts Tutorial. You will see a link to the survey at the end of the tutorial. If you follow it, he provides a password which can be used to take the online survey. The survey software is free, so it is both effective and affordable!5. Lib 2.0 Resources Page: Screencasting From Lib2.0 Wiki
"This page lists examples of library tutorials on a variety of subjects - catalogs, databases, internet searching and more. Many were created with screencasting software, while others have been created with Flash and other graphics tools that require more technical and graphics expertise." It also lists information on the software used to create Screencasts, as well as a list of other resources.
Latest page update: made by paulbetty
, Apr 16 2008, 6:36 PM EDT
(about this update
About This Update
edit URL for GA screencast in form accepted by wiki
- paulbetty
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edit URL for GA screencast in form accepted by wiki
- paulbetty
view changes
- complete history)
More Info: links to this page
| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | |
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| Richard.Baer | SWF file size on Screencast.com | 0 | Jun 17 2008, 12:51 PM EDT by Richard.Baer | |
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Thread started: Jun 17 2008, 12:51 PM EDT
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I have noticed that my Camtasia productions have been getting larger, the last one is 84MB for 3.30 min. This can be slow for a user to run depending on their broadband capacity. Using the video editing tools in Camtasia such as zooms and callouts adds to the recorded size of the .avi.
There are two solutions: 1 - make the tutorials plain vanilla so that a swf will be small. This seems to defeat the purpose of developing rich content. 2. - Use swf for downloading and alternate versions for delivery. There is another thread that discusses how to use embed code and have screencast.com serve the tutorial, that still requires good bandwidth to deliver a 84MB swf file. The alternate is for a site to download all 3 files from DSpace, then edit the Camtasia file themselves. Once you have the 3 files in a folder, you can produce the tutorial to a .flv which will be much smaller. You will need to serve the files from a server that handles swfs. The much smaller flv is contained in two wrappers, a HTML file and a swf wrapper that provides captioning, live links, quizzes, anything interactive that you want to add. Remember that the Creative Commons license lets you modify the source files, i.e. the camrec and camproj. |
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| Richard.Baer | Collaborative tutorials - part 2 | 0 | Jun 9 2008, 7:37 PM EDT by Richard.Baer | |
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Thread started: Jun 9 2008, 7:37 PM EDT
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How can you collaborate on a tutorial?
You can be a content expert or you can be the one with the software license. When you are considering doing an animated tutorial, the project may seem daunting when you think of everything you need to do. Get an idea, write a script, then record it and do the editing. Even if you are pretty good with Captivate or Camtasia or Viewlet builder, the front end takes work. The planning is just as important as the recording, even more so. I saw in this wiki that Bill Badke had committed to do a tutorial on Research questions. I had no pressing project and am on Professional Development so can try new things. I proposed that we work together on this one. So, we split the work. Bill knows a lot about information literacy, I have developed my skills on Camtasia. We live 80 km apart so needed a virtual workspace. He wrote the script in his space on PBwiki and invited me as an editor. You can see the script at http://badke.pbwiki.com/Research-Questions After an unrecorded run through, I added a few sentences in places where I thought I needed more narration to cover the length of time that a slide needed to be on the screen. Slides and Camtasia were a new thing for me. I have used Camtasia as a way to capture a flow of changing computer screens. This project needed something else, so I created the visual part of the script in powerpoint, then recorded the narration as I clicked through the powerpoint show. If you are working with faculty and they can create content in powerpoint, that is probably an easier learning curve for them than working out a script for an internet search project. You can add the voice and do the production and uploading. The final product is at DSpace: http://hdl.handle.net/1880/46628 From my initial proposal to the completed project was about 6 or 7 days, so you can execute your ideas very quickly. Richard |
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| Richard.Baer | Scripts and content specialists | 0 | May 20 2008, 12:23 PM EDT by Richard.Baer | |
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Thread started: May 20 2008, 12:23 PM EDT
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I have realized that knowing how to produce a tutorial in Camtasia does not mean that I have to do it alone.
Just like in the real movies, there are functions that can someone else can do. One of our librarians was between projects and on a quiet reference desk. I asked her to write a script for the Sage Criminology tutorial. She made a great script in a 3 column table. Narration in the left, mouse action in the centre and callouts in the right. I put it through a dry run, testing my cadence and how the narration matched the mouse movements. I added some narration, deleted a bit, then recorded and produced in about 4 hours total. So if you are a subject ace and someone at your library can produce in Camtasia, team work will even out the workload and produce a better tutorial. Richard |
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