VoiceThread Discussion Mode Work Flow
My first work flow is pretty straightforward. I want to ask students a directed discussion question. I want the students to answer the questions right there in the VoiceThread. This is a discussion board on steroids. I have always believed that proximity has always been a problem in learning management systems. The learning content is in one place and the collaboration tools are in another. This is just too clunky. VoiceThread puts everything where in needs to be.
This allows me to concentrate on the learning sequence and the work flow right there in the tool. I don’t have to worry about the student having to move all over the LMS just to get the assignment done.
The assignment goes like this: the student clicks on the assignment link and the VoiceThread opens in its own window. Here the student will find the discussion question that was taken from the course learning content, video or textbook. They can read the question and the comments of their fellow students without having to log in. When they are ready to respond to the question, they register for VoiceThread by typing in their email address and choosing a password. They only have to do this once. Next time they just log in and go for it.
Here is a screencast that I created to help students through their first assignment using VoiceThread’s comment feature. This was the procedure we adopted in our first VoiceThread pilot where we issued the students a user name and password. In later courses the students just created a VoiceThread account and began using it instantly.
To help put this all into perspective I have made another short screencast that shows how this works from the instructions and link in the LMS to the actual VoiceThread. This is the Chapter 2 Video Case Study where we ask the students to view a streaming video and answer a discussion question all done using VoiceThread.
