What is it?
Screencast is a digital video recording that captures actions taking place on a computer screen. It also can include audio and video of the presenter. Like audio feedback, screencasting allows teacher to provide extensive comments on students’ work in a more time-efficient way which is more personal to the students.
By creating screencast videos for feedback, teachers are able to indicate specific needs for revision within student assignments, discuss possible approaches for revising, display assignment rubrics to specify criteria that are and are not being met, direct writers to online resources, and give “voiced” affirmations to developing writers.
Why would I use it?
Some benefits are:
- Much more feedback can be provided in a 10 minute screencast than in 10 minutes of typing (Turner & West 2013). All of the feedback is given through specific examples from the work because it is like ‘live’ marking.
- Developing writers, especially English language learners and those with dyspraxia, benefit from clear and specific feedback on assignments in a language and discourse that makes sense.
- Research has shown that students feel they are being personally engaged (even if marking is done anonymously) so they spent more time reviewing feedback, seeing the effort that has gone into it! (Henderson & Phillips 2015).
- It is not a means of saving time per se, but it takes no more time than written feedback (Vincelette & Bostic 2013), especially after practice. It can save time in explaining things (in class or office hours) after students have received their submissions because you will have explained things in more detail in the screencast feedback.
Known Issues
- It is still one directional information transfer from teacher to student. To mitigate this, you can include a dialogic tool such as the Interactive Cover sheet, where you respond directly to students’ request for feedback. Or you can ask students to reply and post it to you.
- It is hard to ensure standardisation of feedback as it encourages more teacher personalisation; therefore, bear this in mind with external examiners if considering it as summative feedback.
How has it been used?
KCL case study: SSPP This example is part of SSPP’s Assessment and Feedback Showcase KEATS page. You can contact Rod Dacombe, Simon Hall or Huw Davis to ask to be registered on this.
KCL Case Study: Jack Fosten from King’s Business School uses Screencastomatic to give formative feedback through quizzes.
David Comiskey from the University of Ulster provides a short video demonstration of screencasting and its benefits):
Thomson & Lee (2012)’s article contains some examples and a breakdown of their results of using screencasting for feedback.