Worked Example

The final assignment in my EDTECH 513 class on multimedia at Boise State University focused on creating a worked example video. A worked example is basically a How-To video that uses research-based multimedia methods to create an e-learning artifact. For my video, I chose to concentrate on a topic that comes up frequently in my interactions with students at the college at which I work: peer reviewed journal articles. Many students come to the college with a working knowledge of libraries. They know we have books they can borrow, probably some videos, and maybe some reference materials. Those same students, however, do not know much about journal literature and the special place it occupies in academia. With that in mind, I went about planning for and creating my video.

First, I thought about the face-to-face instruction I provide to students on the topic of peer reviewed journal literature. I run a series of short, drop-in style lessons during the school year called Bite Size Library Lessons. The lessons are designed to be delivered in under 30 minutes, with 15 minutes being the target. This leaves time to adequately cover the topic and leave time for conversation.

Next, I created a script based on the lesson plans and conversations that take place during a typical lesson.

Third, I created some PowerPoint slides to use in providing pretraining for students on the technical terms associated with the topic, especially the term “peer reviewed”. I also discussed the differences between databases and search engines in the pretraining portion of the video. In the pretraining section of the video, I followed best practices in multimedia development including the redundancy principle (I used limited text except for the discussion of technical terms) and the coherence principle (see the visuals displayed during the What Does Peer Reviewed mean?), and the personalization principle (I am visually present in the video and use personalized language. I also used music for the intro and outro, making sure that the music did not distract the learner from the content.).

Fourth, I recorded myself working through a search, applying filters and sorting results as I went along, and finally viewing a full text, peer reviewed journal article. I used Camtasia for the creation of the video and used some of the callout features as appropriate.

By creating this worked example artifact I have demonstrated competence in AECT Standards 3.1 – Creating and 3.2 Using.  As to standard 3.1, I created a worked example video in compliance with multimedia instruction principles and research-based best practices, including adhering to the redundancy, coherence, and personalization principles. As to standard 3.2, made sound professional decisions regarding the selection of appropriate processes and resources to use in providing conditions that optimized the learning potential of this worked example artifact. I considered the learning objectives I wanted to communicate to learners, determined the best way to deliver the lesson using an approach that was solidly grounded in current multimedia theory practices.