This postA couple of weeks ago I came across Meredith Farkas’s post on screencasting, and it’s been on the back burner of my mind ever since, particularly this line: “There are a few studies out there that have evaluated the efficacy of screencast tutorials, but none that have really shown that screencasts are better than any other method of instruction (at least none I’ve found).”
On a techie level, screencasts are really cool, and I’ve generally been excited when I find good ones on relevant topics. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if they really are all that useful. I suspect their domain is more limited than I originally thought.
The main disadvantage of screencasts, in my mind, is that they’re slow compared to text. It’s harder to find what you’re looking for when rewinding and fast-forwarding through a screencast than when you’re reading an article.
What’s the use, then? It seems to me that screencasts are best when 1) kept short and 2) they show something that would be hard to capture in text only (for example, doing some things in 3D software or in Photoshop is easier seen than read). But whole tutorials?
Perhaps screencasts have more value when catering to newbies, especially those who are new to computers and technology. I’m a programmer and have been working with computers for 15 years now, so I could totally be skewing the stats here. :) Even so, if you don’t quite catch the sequence in a screencast, rewinding and playing it over again is a pain; it’s a lot easier to read a list of points. (I experienced this a couple days ago when trying to follow a face-creation tutorial for Blender. There’s a 16-step sequence on creating the nose, and it wasn’t exactly easy to follow.)
Maybe I’m just impatient. :) It is true that screencasts are nice to watch on your iPod (or Zune ~shudder~) when you’re away from the computer and need to kill some time. And for anything requiring visual instruction, it can really help to see what’s going on.
Thoughts?
P.S. Speaking of using technology for education, this morning I listened to Pandora’s first podcast, on vocal harmony. Good stuff — I’m really looking forward to future episodes, and I’ve started hunting around for songwriting/composition podcasts. If you think about it, podcasts are perfect for teaching music because it’s all sound-based to begin with. Brilliant.
