I decided to embed screencasts into a blog in order to deliver content to my A Level class and 'flip' some of my lessons; the screencast would deliver the content and the blog would offer context and further activities. For the most part, the blog and screencast combination worked well. However, some issues arose:
It seems that my students didn't start at the top of the blog and read down, as they would with a book. In fact, some didn't look at the title or date of each blog. Rather, they scanned the page for the most gratifying part, and ignored the rest. This habit isn't restricted to online content; over the years students have been drawn to resources within examination questions and ignored the preceding instructions. As a result, they mis-interpreted the question and lost marks. Also:
The students who read the text would see the links and other activities as optional further reading rather than an integral part of the delivery of the lesson.
The blog shows the most recent post first. Some students only read the most recent posts and missed the preceding content.
In a world saturated with information, the ability to scan and filter is essential; I need to ensure that this filtering process doesn't just include the visually appealing resources but the accompanying information as well. Perhaps all of the information should be visually appealing? Then again, perhaps their attention would be drawn to the most appealing resource and the other information would still be filtered out?
In future, I intend to devote time to teach online study skills as part of the course and give more thought to the design and delivery of my digital content.
