Group Members are: Cristina Holman, Gavin Hayes, Michael Hunc, and myself Eiman Elnoshokaty.
Video tutorial Intended audience
Out on the Shelves library (OOTS) describe its patron base to be as broad as “LGBT2QIA+ people and their allies” . The video tutorial is designed for the use of the entire population targeted by OOTS library, it thus caters to the general public, and so it is designed to address an audience with minimal prior knowledge and experience with using the library catalogue or similar technology, and so limited library jargon or technical terminology are used.
Purpose of the tutorial
- Promote the use of the library catalogue to explore the library collections.
- Educate the library patrons on navigating the library catalogue and the use of its different features.
- Promote hidden features of the library catalogue, such as creating library accounts with the purpose of expanding the library patron base, and the patron-generated book titles suggestions.
Challenges (Technological and pedagogical)
- This was the first time using the new Windows Movie Maker (Now simply a part of the ‘Photos’ app) and it has changed quite a bit from the older model with which the group member who managed the editing process (Michael) was familiar with. There was a bit of a learning curve discovering its new features.
- Another struggle was experienced during the publishing phase while trying to figure out how to add subtitles/closed captions using YouTube’s updated user interface in light of the availability of outdated YouTube tutorials that only referred to the old interface.
- We were also completely unfamiliar with the processes of screencasting and recording a voiceover. The screencasting application, Screencast-O-Matic, was also new territory.
- The need to avoid jargon with the purpose of making the tutorial as accessible as possible to the general public.
- The need to keep the tutorial both short, interesting and at the same time informative and comprehensive.
Addressing the Challenges
- Developed familiarity with the new features of Windows Movie Maker primarily through a lot of trial and error and experimentation.
- Also took trial and error to navigate through the new YouTube design and find where subtitles were hidden as well as how to create them.
- We overcame the unfamiliarity of the screencasting process by doing a number of trial-runs, until the finalized product was acceptable.
- Being mindful of any jargon or library terminology at the early stage of writing the tutorial script were those terms which were perceived to be challenging were identified and explained in the video as to avoid any confusion.
Final product versus its intended purpose
- The final product is a 5 minutes video tutorial that manages to capture all the information that Out on the Shelves requested.
- By providing necessary instructions on using the library catalogue, the tutorial empowers the viewer to explore the library and its collections.
- Apart from walking through the basic search facilities of the catalogue (including searching and browsing collections, navigating through the search results page), many additional catalogue features and library services were introduced throughout the tutorial. The benefits of creating a personal account were touched upon at multiple occasions,
personalization features such as creating personal lists and introducing customized tags to books. - There were additional features of the online catalogue that we chose not to include in order to keep the video to a reasonable length.
Distributing the Project Workload
The workload for this assignment was equally distributed among the team members based on interests and prior expertise and skills. The team met virtually well in advance for planning and, using online collaborative tools, listed all tasks involved in the process and each member volunteered to take responsibility of a task. All members contributed equally in:
- The brainstorming for deciding on the components which we want to include in the video tutorial.
- Fine tuning and provide feedback and suggestions to the work of each of the other three group members.
- Finalizing their tasks in a timely and professional manner.
- Demonstrating an excellent level of professionalism and commitment to the project.
Individually, I was responsible of reporting the group work in document that would provide reflections and answers to questions about the video tutorial intended context and audience, its purpose, the different challenges met and how they were handled, how the final product meets the purpose for which it was designed, and an analysis of two similar tutorials in addition to our own product in terms of strengths and weaknesses, and finally the rationale behind the grade we assign to our tutorial.
References:
Pedersen, M. (2015, July 14). Best practices: What is the optimal length for video content? AdAge.
Learning Significance