As a final step for each skills assignment, students will perform a task while explaining what steps they’re performing and why they’re performing them. Such self-explanation activities have been found to be a beneficial learning technique. Furthermore, performing the target type of task for a third time will further help students gain the benefits of practice effects.
In the video recording, you must do the following:
For some explanation videos, you will be instructed to engage in task planning and reflection as part of the exercise. Here is how you should do it.
Before you start recording:
Fill in the Planned Subtasks section of your copy. Each subtask should correspond to a step in one of the demos. For each subtask, you must specify the Rails component that is relevant to the subtask and the URL of the demo relevant to the subtask. The subtask description maybe borrow wording from the demo steps, but must also include some clarification relevant to the current task (generally as a parenthetical; see the EXAMPLE sheets for some examples).
Upon beginning the recording:
As you work on the coding task, follow along in the Reflection part of spreadsheet, performing each subtask and filling in how long each subtask took as you go. The time durations must be in minutes and doesn’t have to be exact (just put your best guess and move on).
As you’re working, if you encounter a bug introduced earlier and have to spend some time debugging it, you can insert a new subtask in the Reflection. That subtask should be inserted to reflect the order in which you actually did things, and it’s Relevant Component can be specified as bug-fix. Its Description should contain a brief description of what the bug was and what you did to fix it.
The video recordings you make must meet the following requirements:
There are two good ways that we know of to produce these videos using software that is freely available to you. Here are some instructions for each:
Additionally, there are non-free options you are welcome to try as well, like Camtasia, but that is up to you.
To submit your explanation video, follow these steps:
Upload to YouTube. Upload your video to YouTube, and set its visibility to “unlisted”. Be aware that YouTube accepts only certain video formats (although they’re generally the most common ones), so you’ll want to make sure your recording has a compatible encoding. Also, note that in order to post videos longer than 15 minutes in YouTube, you must have a “verified account” (see these instructions for more info).
Submit Video URL via Dropbox. Paste the YouTube URL of the video into the appropriate Canvas dropbox.
Submit Task Plan and Reflection Spreadsheet (if Relevant). If the assignment required you to create a task plan and reflection spreadsheet, then you must download a copy of the spreadsheet (in XLSX format), and you must also upload that spreadsheet in the appropriate Canvas dropbox.
Explanation videos are graded as pass/fail. An explanation video may be graded as a fail if any of the following are true.
✖ Task done wrong. There must not be significant errors in the performance of the task, and the steps performed must not deviate significantly from the prescribed way of doing things.
✖ Missing or wrong explanations. There must not be significant errors in what the speaker says, and things must not be under-explained.
✖ Missing or wrong general steps. There must not be any significant omissions or errors in the mentioning of the general steps from the demos as the task is performed.
✖ Editing the video to remove mistakes. The video of your task performance must be done in a single take, without any sort of editing. It’s ok to make a mistake as long as you correct it later in the video, and explain why the mistake was made and how you fixed it.
✖ Poor audio/video quality. The video must be of sufficiently high quality that everything can be seen clearly, and the audio must be clear such that the speaker can be easily understood.
✖ Reading from a script. You must not read directly from notes or a script when talking aloud during the task. At the least, you would have to memorize such a script, but you really should have sufficient mastery of the material that you can simply draw from your own knowledge/understanding as you speak.
✖ Using a Secondary Monitor. Your computer may have multiple monitors, and your recording may only capture one of them. That’s fine, but be sure not to use the monitors not being recorded during the demo. For example, students may be tempted to read from a script on a secondary monitor, while they record the activity on a different monitor. If we suspect something like that is happening, the explanation video will receive failing marks.
✖ Copy/Pasting pre-prepared code. You must perform the task in the manner you naturally would if you were doing it for the first time. Preparing code ahead of time, and copying and pasting it in your demo video is forbidden.
Additionally, keep the following in mind as you create your videos:
✔ Limited, deliberate copy/pasting is OK. As you perform the task, some copying and pasting from the demos is allowed; however, any code you paste you must fully explain.
✔ Rough edges are OK. Your performance in the video doesn’t have to be perfect in order to pass. For example, some making and debugging of mistakes is fine. Also, making a small number of minor mistakes in your explanations would likely pass as well.
✔ Taking a break or getting help from a TA is OK. If you get very stuck or need to take a break, you may pause or stop the recording while you seek help from a TA, as long as you resume from the same place and mention what happened. It’s ok to upload multiple videos.
✔ Some “Check It!” steps may be skipped. Although you should always show that the functionality you create in your video works by running it, you need not perform every “Check It!” step in a demo. That said, the final version of the code definitely must be run and tested, and I strongly recommend some intermediate running and testing of the code as you write it to ensure that you haven’t introduced any bugs along the way.