Case Study: Screencast Assistance at the University of Bristol

Among other roles, the Education Support Unit (ESU) at the University of Bristol provides support and training in the use of Blackboard, the University's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Following the implementation of a new version of Blackboard the ESU approached JISC Digital Media for help in creating a set of screencast resources to support their users in the transition.

Having tried screencasting a few times before with mixed results, ESU asked JISC Digital Media to assist them in planning, producing and delivering the project, including developing templates and providing training for future projects to ensure sustainability.

Objectives

ESU wanted to create a set of screencast user guides and FAQs which would help orientate users to the new environment, and supplement their existing written guides and Helpdesk service. After discussing and defining the scope and outputs of the project together, the project team summarised the immediate aim as follows:

"…to produce a set of video guides in screencast form to address common enquiries and support requests made to the BlackBoard Support Team helpdesk, and thereby to improve Blackboard support resources, while reducing the number of helpdesk calls."
extract from ESU Project Brief

Solutions

As both teams were based in Bristol, JISC Digital Media and ESU took the opportunity to work closely together to plan and develop the screencasts, with the client team providing all the subject matter for the resources, and JISC Digital Media helping them find innovative and efficient ways of presenting the information in the most effective form possible.

Importantly, JISC Digital Media also provided guidance and training to allow the ESU team to maintain and develop these resources beyond the initial phases of the project: an initial mentored production phase allowed the joint team to work together on the development of the workflow and the production and editing phases, whilst also giving ESU some informal training to allow them to work independently on future screencasts.

ESU decided on the topics to be covered based on common queries received, and also areas where Blackboard's own videos either did not cover the topic or were not appropriate.

Of the ten suggested topics, JISC Digital Media advised concentrating on the longer ‘Staff Introduction' and three shorter FAQ screencasts during this first phase of the project. By addressing two slightly different types of resource in this way, it would be possible to define the particular needs of each, and work out which elements of the screencast template and workflow were common to both, and which would need to be tailored to a particular purpose. It would also allow ESU to learn how to re-use common elements and styles whist still maintaining a consistent output quality.

Outcomes and Benefits

1. Planning

During the planning phase, a number of practical decisions were made about the format, length and scripting of the screencasts.

It was crucial to ensure access for all users, so step-by-step audio instructions clearly describing the on-screen procedures (i.e. no "click this button" instructions) were provided throughout, and transcripts of the scripted content synchronised to the audio as Closed Caption subtitles. Because of the time spent in thorough planning and scripting, this text could be imported and used almost unchanged for the captions, saving time transcribing voice-overs. You can enable the captions in the examples below.

Before starting production, the master video resolution was decided at 1280x720 pixels, a popular HD widescreen format, offering good clarity, especially for dense text. Early establishment of the destination format allowed all screen capture to be made at the correct resolution, and all additional video and graphic materials to be optimised for this resolution, thus minimizing the often harmful effects of cropping and rescaling.

2. Production - the Recording sessions

To ensure tight synchronisation and minimal editing, voice-over would be captured at the same time as screen capture. While necessitating slightly more preparation and rehearsal, the time savings made in post-production vindicated this approach.

All voice-over materials were scripted, and all processes to be demonstrated were decided in advance, and rehearsed, enabling recording in a single afternoon. There were many advantages to this approach, most notably the time saved in only needing to set up the recording equipment once, as well as consistent quality of results.

After an introduction to the recording workstation and requirements, ESU's presenters were left to record at their own pace, generally saving two or three complete takes, and discarding unsatisfactory ones, and thereby allowing elements of the best takes to be selected when editing. Longer episodes (e.g. the Staff Introduction) were scripted and recorded in short segments, which not only simplified editing, but will allow updates to be made in the future as and when procedures change, without the need for wholesale re-recording.

3. Post-production - Editing and enhancement

Because of the careful planning, only a few corrective edits were required and so this stage could focus on elements such as screen annotation and enhancement of the mouse pointer, as well as zooms and highlights, captions and indexing - all of which are intended to clarify and elucidate the screen action.

An important aspect of the project was making the screencasts look and feel polished and professional. This can help not only to frame the content and engage the audience, but to promote the image and brand of the producer, and the project team spent some time developing the visual identity, which forms a large part of the template used for future productions.

4. Outputs

The final master video files were output in MP4 format, at a suitable fidelity for what we anticipate to be the most demanding potential uses for this type of content (1280x720 MP4 video with 128kbps AAC stereo sound).

Also generated at this stage were the additional files used to present this MP4 video within a Flash player, necessary for additional features such as the index and subtitles. MP4s are tagged with suitable embedded metadata, naming the authors, contributors and copyright holders, along with additional production and catalogue information.

The final master of the ‘Staff Introduction' was 6 minutes long, and all FAQ masters were around 1 minute, which were close to our initial target lengths. These are a couple of the results:

click on the image above to open one of the project FAQ screencasts in its custom player

click on the image above to open 'Staff Introduction' screencast within its custom player

Future plans

At present, delivery to the core audience is via the University’s Blackboard VLE, which includes a module allowing the embedding of a Flash player to stream the videos on demand to users.

Future delivery, on the other hand, is likely to involve many potential channels including public video repositories like Youtube or Vimeo and educational repositories like iTunesU or Jorum. The combination of Flash elements and High Definition MP4 master outputs is anticipated to be compatible with all of these and other current online video delivery mechanisms, or suitable for transcoding as necessary.

Through tools such as templates and a well defined workflow, ESU is now able to maintain a consistent look and feel to future productions, and the training and good practice they have received from JISC Digital Media will be disseminated to the rest of their team as well as other colleagues as they work together on other projects.

The project outputs themselves should require minimal or no maintenance for continued use in their current form but because of their modular nature, are easily updatable. Furthermore, all original material is archived, should it be needed for re-editing, rendering in a different format or for a new device, or for reuse in a different form.

ESU is already developing the resource with the aid of the template, and finding it both saves time and improves quality and consistency, and there remains the potential for widening the use of these materials and standards by customising them to the needs of other departments and users throughout the University of Bristol.

Testimonials

The project provided the solution to a problem we had struggled with for several years - how to quickly and easily create a bank of multimedia support materials with minimal investment in either staff training or equipment. Given the range of skills within the ESU team, we needed a way to simplify the production process for multimedia resources, allowing all team members to develop multimedia guides and tutorials while ensuring a consistent and high quality output.

Through the initial work with JISC Digital Media the ESU team gained important insight into best practice when planning, recording and deploying screencasts, as well as three completed screencast guides for staff which addressed key staff support needs.

Initially we envisioned creating a limited number of screencasts simply to answer the most common questions sent by staff to the eLearning Helpdesk, however Gavin’s help with the template and best practice advice allowed us to rapidly expand this remit, partly in response to the positive feedback from academic staff. As a result screencasts have been developed to support the deployment of a key new module of Blackboard (the Content System), and expand our support materials to include guides for students, and also to house short videos of staff recorded using an HD flipcam.

- The Education Support Unit

We were pleased with the recommended style, which suited an academic audience, and the ease of development enabled by the template.

- Professor John Davis, the University of Bristol’s Academic Director of e-Learning