Group Work Experience:

Because Critique^It is a peer review software program, group work was necessary to fully explore its features. We needed to be able to see how it enabled users to give feedback, as well as receive it, and how those users would choose different modalities in order to comment on different elements. For example, we turned to stamp comments or written comments for lower order concerns and video or audio to talk through higher order concerns.

This inclination is supported by scholarship that indicates that intermodality is beneficial in online writing: combining audio, text, and video promotes the writing process and facilitates collaboration between peers (Ciekanski and Chanier 175 and 178). And certain modes promote certain aspects of revision and editing: written feedback enables students to more easily locate problem sentences while audio/video comments help students understand larger concerns (Silva 1).

We considered exchanging drafts of the document portion of this project through Critique^It, but we felt GoogleDocs would be easier. We worked asynchronously, for the most part, and used GoogleDocs’s chat feature to plan and resolve issues when we happened upon synchronous work. Our preference for GoogleDocs for production gave us some important data. It became clear that, while Critique^It is great for group peer review, it falls short in the area of group production. Navigating our group’s needs with different technology helped us to further explore the affordances and limitations of the tool we were analyzing.

One element that stood out about this multimodal group project was technical compatibility. Catrina volunteered to put the video together, but we struggled at first with different screen capture programs (Jing vs. SnagIt) and the file types that Catrina could work with in her video editing program. Jing can only save a flash file, and she needed .mp4 files. We, therefore, agreed to use a free trial version of Snagit, which would enable us to save in the file type she needed.

I think the most interesting aspect of working in a group, at a distance, on a multimodal project was our process for incorporating different tools. We determined what needed to happen first. For example, we knew we needed to compose a single edited video. Then we selected the technology that would work best for that purpose. For example, we ultimately chose SnagIt after some trial and error.

Usually when I’m designing my course, I work in the opposite direction. I choose a medium and shoe-horn it into my course rather than focusing on what my students need to do and what technology will facilitate that action. This progression is supported by scholarship, particularly Helen Grady  and Marjorie Davis, who urge teachers to first perform a “learner and task analysis” and then determine an “instructional strategy and medium” (104). For me, the biggest lesson was recognizing that technology is an extension of ourselves, helping us to accomplish what we need to do, and it is best to select technology based on the need rather than developing a need to fit the technology.

Works Cited:

Ciekanski, Maud and Thierry Chanier. "Developing Online Multimodal Verbal Communication To Enhance The Writing Process In An Audio-Graphic Conferencing Environment." Recall 20.2 (2008): 162-182. Academic Search Complete. Web. 21 May 2012.

Grady, Helen M. and Marjorie T. Davis. “Teaching Well Online with Instructional and Procedural Scaffolding.” Online Education: Global Questions, Local Answers. Eds. Kelli Cargile Cook and Keith Grant-Davie. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc., 2005.

Silva, Mary Lourdes. "Camtasia In The Classroom: Student Attitudes And Preferences For Video Commentary Or Microsoft Word Comments During The Revision Process." Computers & Composition 29.1 (2012): 1-22. Academic Search Complete. Web. 30 May 2012.