Instructional Technologies for Presentation and Organization: A Technical and Pedagogical Perspective

This blog post is written in collaboration with Kyle, Instructional Media Support.

In this post, we’re excited to introduce and discuss four instructional technologies useful in eLearning environments: Descript, OBS, Coda, and H5P! Originally, we began exploring these technologies from a purely technological perspective. Tara asked Kyle to review the tools to understand them from a technical point of view: how do these technologies work? What are their practical uses and limitations? 

After gathering this information, Kyle shared his findings with me. In turn, I experimented with these technologies based on my teaching experience as well as research about ways these technologies could be used in an instructional setting. As a result, we combined our respective experiences to audit the practical application of these technologies for SAU online and blended courses. Our collaboration follows the TPACK model as discussed by Koehler and Mishra (2009) of Michigan State University. We sought to explore how these four technologies (“T”) impact pedagogy and content knowledge (“APCK”) within any instructional setting. 

Descript

Descript allows users a new option for editing video and audio editing—entirely in the browser. Typically, in video editing software you work directly with the video or audio file by cutting, splicing, and reworking the “timeline.” In Descript, your file automatically develops into an editable transcript that can be spliced to affect the video/audio file. The GIF below shows how you can use Descript to create new scenes or transitions by manipulating paragraphs. 

Descript also boasts a sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) function that, over time, learns to mimic your voice and fill in new lines of dialogue in your recordings—without having to redo them yourself. While the AI function could be a useful feature, it’s still in development so we cannot officially recommend it quite yet.

Descript works well for instructors interested in making visual presentations with voice-overs—especially as a component in a flipped classroom or fully online course. For example, if you taught a course previously, you might want to use existing PowerPoint presentations with more details or explanation. Therefore, you could use Descript to create a voiceover presentation of these PowerPoint presentations to further elaborate on concepts. However, instructors and students alike can use this technology to make audio content (such as a podcast) for a course.  

Coda

Coda describes itself as an “all-in-one” document and project management site that streamlines the process of working on projects with a team (Coda, n.d.). Instead of spreading team information across multiple websites and apps, Coda offers a singular workplace where a group can manage their resources and time together using interactive tools and features. It even offers a way to track accountability as well as progress on specific tasks, as seen in the GIF below.

Like Descript, Coda includes an AI program that can automaticity build out documents based on queries made by the team; though this, too, is still in an early developmental phase. This platform may struggle when it takes on too many tasks and features at once, and some of those features may become redundant at times. Despite this, Coda offers teams a central place to collaborate on their next big project together.

Due to its user-friendly nature, Coda could be helpful for students, instructors, and even eLearning or instructional design teams. In an instructional setting, you could delegate and organize tasks for group projects. For example, if you noticed students struggled with accountability and task management in a group project in past iterations of a course, you could require student groups to use Coda to share and track their progress while working together. This would help to ensure students divide their work equitably and fairly—and you could hold students accountable for completing their work in the same manner. 

OBS Studio

OBS Studio is a downloadable software that can be used to record or stream with your computer. Its customizable setup makes it possible to record not only what’s on your screen, but also your voice, and even your webcam. OBS can also manage several layers of recordings at once, depending on what you need. As seen in the GIF below, the software is adept at capturing lectures, presentations, and so much more. 

The one drawback to OBS is its complexity. It’s not the most intuitive software, and it takes a lot of practice and time to understand (especially if you want to set up a multi-layered recording). But once mastered, OBS’s quality and ease of use greatly outpaces any shortcomings.

Like Descript, this app would be extremely useful for instructors to use as a voiceover tool for narrated PowerPoint presentations in online or flipped classrooms. However, due to its ability to screen-record and simultaneously provide a recording from a document camera connected to a desktop or laptop computer, this app displays exciting possibilities for courses that require more intensive modeling synchronously and asynchronously. For example, in an English Literature course, if an online instructor wants to discuss and annotate a specific reading passage during class time (i.e. a “guided annotation” or “close-reading activity”), they could record through OBS both a set of PowerPoint notes on the passage, and a recording of them reading and annotating the passage in real-time—and post this presentation onto their LMS. Similarly, a Mathematics instructor could use OBS to complete real-time practice problems for students while still projecting notes from an existing PowerPoint presentation. In both scenarios, students could access and re-watch these videos of guided practice or practice examples for additional support and clarification at any time.

H5P

H5P provides the unique opportunity to transform your videos and presentations into interactive experiences. You can add pop-up questions, quizzes, website links, and other interactive features to instructive media to engage the learner. Quizzes can be anything from a fill-in-the-blank question to a multiple-choice test, as the GIF below demonstrates. 

H5P can even measures retention on these questions, giving viewers a grade near the end to show how well they did. For first-time use, H5P can be very complicated. Its settings are very precise and not the most intuitive. Once you become familiar with it, H5P is an excellent platform for turning instructional media into engaging interactive content.  

H5P can be a very helpful tool for increasing student engagement with course materials such as PowerPoint presentations and YouTube videos (especially if you have pre-existing media content). You can use H5P to add features previously discussed, such as intermittent formative assessment (quiz) questions, surveys, and more. These features are very similar to those found in EdPuzzle, which I discussed in my post about social and collaborative eLearning tools. 

Concluding Thoughts

As educators, it’s crucial to deeply understand instructional technologies from both a technical and pedagogical perspective to best support student learning. By following the TPACK approach to understanding best practices for instructional technology implementation, various apps and software can be thoughtfully and creatively implemented in any eLearning course. We look forward to discussing a “case study” in a future post, in which we apply one of these technologies into a SAU course in collaboration with a current instructor.

References

Coda. (n.d.). Home page. 

Koehler, M., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK)?. CITE Journal, 9(1).