Impromptu speaking in ELMS
CaptureStudio is a tool that was developed out of a need that wasn’t met by off-the-shelf offerings from our campus LMS. Simply put, CaptureStudio is an assessment tool for impromptu speaking. The key here is the impromptu part – the concept is that students don’t get much time to prepare their response in order to become better at articulating their thoughts and ideas quickly.
The first challenge for us was to find something that would prevent students from gaming the system in order to figure out their speaking topic in advance and give themselves more time to prepare. We looked into various tools (YouSeeU and Voicethread among them) but we weren’t impressed. None of them offered the full functionality we wanted.
It became clear that we would need to build a home-grown solution very quickly, which is where ELMS came in. What we were able to do through the use of ELMS’ platform and the network of intelligent people behind it was to create a tool that met the need and also created a seamless, smooth experience for students.
Keep reading for a closer look at what exactly CaptureStudio is and what it was designed to do.
CaptureStudio’s experience is divided into three parts which correspond to the three videos in the playlist below: the administrative setup, the assignment completion/submission experience, and the Open Studio peer feedback element.
The administrative setup is fairly straightforward. This is where all the assignment details are filled in. Our demo assignment uses images as the prompt for students’ speech topics. We have a gallery tool (also developed in house, more to come on that as well) that we were able to link to CaptureStudio so that it randomly pulls an image whenever a student accesses the tool.
In the second video, I talk through the student experience of actually using CaptureStudio to submit an assignment and some of the features we wanted to build in to make the experience smooth. It was really essential that we minimize room for user error and take technology out of the equation for this tool.
The final video in the playlist is a demo of the ELMS Open Studio, which we adapted to use for peer feedback of CaptureStudio submissions. Having the ELMS platform to use was critical – it takes care of all the behind the scenes stuff (access, accounts, etc.) and makes the experience seamless.
That’s the current iteration of our tool. Of course, we’re not done with CaptureStudio. We want to build out the functionality for peer feedback to allow for inline commenting on videos, figure out a way to allow multiple students to record a “group” presentation asynchronously, and also figure out an instructor feedback interface to allow the instructor to complete an in-depth assessment for students’ videos.
Even though impromptu speaking is the original intention of the tool, other shops around campus have shown interest in using it to complete oral assessments with large enrollment classes, modifying it to allow for students to record their rehearsed presentations, and for performing arts students to record themselves and receive feedback.
Have another idea for using, improving or expanding on CaptureStudio? Let us know