Communications Professor Pat Scanlon has come up with an innovative way to lessen the tedium in his online technical writing class (0502-444). Scanlon has been teaching this particular class both online and face-to-face for about ten years. When he decided that it was time to revamp the videotaped lectures used for a portion of his online class, Scanlon - with the help of staff from Online Learning and the Educational Technology Center - converted his instructional and pedagogical strategies over to a new method. By combining audio, video and close-captioning inside power-point presentations, Scanlon has managed to produce a slick 6-module class that’s burned onto a CD-ROM and distributed to students for easy access and navigation.

"I decided that I wanted to produce voice-over power-point presentations rather than talking-head lectures on videotape," says Scanlon, who ultimately merged a number of lectures on technical writing core principles that he has developed over the years into a new online class.

To create the final product entailed first writing a script that would adequately capture each of the six modules in a relatively short time frame. "I wrote a script word-for-word," he says. "You need to do this partly because the power-points need to be transcribed for close-captioning. But it has also been my experience that winging it (the production of a voice-over presentation) only leads to one problem after another. So I wrote the scripts and tooled and played with them for a while."

The next step was to provide a smooth transition from one module to the next. "We decided that the best way to do that was with (Real Player) video clips where I could introduce the entire course in the beginning and do little segue ways from one power point to the next, with a wrap-up at the end," Scanlon says.

"The whole idea was to add a little more than just looking at these power-point presentations and also link them thematically into a coherent whole. Plus, I thought it was important that students see what I look like."

The first module, titled "What’s So Technical About Technical Writing," shows Scanlon siting in the comfort of his office wearing Bermuda shorts and a polo shirt.

"Hi I’m Pat Scanlon and this is technical writing," begins the Real Player video clip. "Because this is an introductory course, we’ll cover the basics of a number of topics that are important to just about everyone in technical communication . . . Okay let’s get started." The entire introductory video clip takes about 60 seconds and then fades away into a 10-minute voice-over power-point presentation where a thorough definition of technical writing as well as a variety of sample technical-writing-oriented documents are creatively displayed.

At the beginning of the second module, titled "Technical Writing Style," Scanlon very briefly reviews what was covered in the first module and then moves forward to the next topic. "So what I’m saying is that technical writing is not so much about what it says but how it says it," Scanlon explains. "Now we turn to the style of writing itself," and Scanlon fades away again into another voice-over power-point presentation.

Putting together the entire CD-ROM was completed "over a couple of months during the summer," says Scanlon. "It was fairly labor intensive. I got some (financial) support from the College (of Liberal Arts). This was not like revamping my syllabus on my computer; it took a great deal of up-front time along with some consultations with people in the Online Learning Department and the Educational Technology Center (ETC) to decide what technologies to use and what would be the best method for delivery."

Through those consultations, Scanlon adds that it became clear early on that "video on the Web is really not yet at that point where you can depend on students getting good quality. There are lots of time lags. I became convinced that CD was the way to go."

Scanlon notes that in addition to the up-front work of refining his power-point scripts, which he produced in ETC’s studio g, he had to do a lot of film takes, which were managed and produced by the ETC staff, for the final production of the video portions of his class. "Even for the short videos, we did about 10 takes each," he says. "The principle part for me is making sure that what the students get is pedagogically sound – that they are really getting the teaching that I want them to have."

Scanlon’s CD-ROMs were introduced to his technical writing class for the first time in the Fall 2002 semester. The reaction thus far has been excellent, he says. "I got some unsolicited comments from students saying how much they liked the CD. Students typically will tell me if something is wrong, and there has not been a single complaint, not a single concern. The response I got was that the CD worked very well."

One clear benefit of using Scanlon’s new instructional method over the old video-taped lecture model is that the power-point slides have links in the left side bar of the screens that allow students to easily navigate forward and backward through the entire presentation. "Vide tapes are clunky," he says. "I feel confident saying that the ease of use now is a big enhancement. In this case I think we came up with the right combination."

Ó Copyright 2003. Rochester Institute of Technology. All Rights Reserved.