Rich Media in a Semester-Long Research Project
Friday, December 9th, 2011Teacher: Allyson Mount
written by Allyson Mount amount@keene.edu
After attending the 1st annual Academic Technology Institute in June 2011, which focused on incorporating rich media into the classroom, I was inspired to reimagine a research assignment for my PHIL 360: Philosophy of Law course. One of the course goals is for students to analyze and critically evaluate a controversial legal issue. I wanted students to research a topic they found especially interesting and to share their findings in a way that both demonstrated their knowledge and incited others to learn more about the issue. In the past, I assigned essays and traditional oral presentations, and both led to decent-enough student work, but they felt routine and were not particularly engaging. Changing the assignment to incorporate rich media, I hoped, would enliven the presentations and encourage students to find creative ways of relating theoretical arguments to practical problems.
I designed a semester-long research project to be completed in seven steps. Each student selected a Supreme Court case on a topic of their choice, read the majority opinion and any dissenting opinions, summarized events that led to the case, analyzed the reasoning behind the Court’s decision, considered objections to that decision, and explored the larger philosophical and legal implications of the case. Then they drafted a narrative that would become the basis for their presentation. These steps were spaced evenly throughout the semester, and students had to submit their work regularly to ensure that they were making progress. At mid-semester, we had individual conferences to discuss their work and identify any difficulties they were having. Then came the fun part.
After the research was done and students had drafted their narration, they created a slideshow to accompany it. Again, there were specific requirements for certain types of information to include, but beyond that students had free reign to organize and present the material as they wished. Each slideshow needed to have a significant visual element, whether by using photos, video clips, animation, or even simple stick figure drawings. Through Blackboard, I provided links to the Creative Commons site and to other sources for finding visual media, and also to a site that helped with formatting photo citations. I had feared that class time would get bogged down with questions about technological details, but for the most part that concern proved unfounded. Students were much more adept at finding interesting visual media than I was.
Terry Classen's video
As students created their slideshows, they often revised and reorganized their narration to emphasize ideas they were depicting visually. This revision extended to the content of their narrations, as well as to the structure. Trying to represent an idea clearly in a diagram or picture often helped students recognize areas where their verbal explanation needed clarification, and consequently the slideshow and narration both improved. This was exactly the kind of true revision-and-rethinking I had tried to get students to engage in on essays in the past – frequently with a frustrating lack of results – and here they were recognizing the value of such revision on their own!
Once the slides and narration were in their final form, students used the free Screencast-o-matic tool to make a screencast recording of their slideshow as they read the narration aloud. The result was a 5-6 minute video file. They submitted links to their screencast recordings through Blackboard, and we spent an enjoyable few hours watching and discussing the videos in class. Students were actively interested in each other’s cases, provided helpful feedback on each project, and clearly demonstrated an in-depth knowledge of the case they researched. Examples of completed projects by Jacqueline Beck and Terry Classen are shown on this page. (They work best in Firefox or Internet Explorer)
Jacqueline Beck's Video
There were several essential elements that helped this project work smoothly.
- First, students had clear guidelines for the basic requirements, yet they had a lot of room to make the project their own and focus on a topic they chose freely.
- Second, the research was conducted before students began working on the slideshow, which ensured that the media piece was used to enhance the academic content, not replace it.
- Third, we practiced the skills needed for this project (breaking down theoretical arguments, summarizing an author’s reasoning, identifying objections) in class and on other homework assignments, so students were engaging in familiar tasks by the time they applied those skills to their project case.
- Fourth, students knew all along that their audience would be the class as a whole – not just the professor! – so they had to explain complex material in a way that was understandable to people unfamiliar with the case.
- Finally, it was key to the success of this assignment that there were regular deadlines to ensure that the work was done incrementally. In the early stages, students received a set number of points simply for turning in the required work at the assigned time, which ensured that the early steps were taken seriously. Then the final project was graded for quality, using a rubric that students had from the start.
Recommendations
For faculty considering this type of assignment, I highly recommend following your own instructions and completing a sample project just as students will. When I first began playing around with the idea of having students create a narrated slideshow, I made one myself to see how much work it would involve and how useful the result would be. My sample fulfilled all the criteria that I was asking students to fulfill. I played my sample presentation when I explained the project on the first day of class, and along with the instructions for each step I also posted my work for that step.
Many students commented that seeing the samples helped them envision a form their own project could take. However, their creativity far outstripped mine, and by the end of the semester I had a deeper appreciation for the time and work that went into their final projects.
Additional Materials
