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I am Merissa Ferrara and I teach in the Department of Communication.
MONICA (interviewer): And what technology tools are you using in your classes?
MERISSA: Currently I use Voicethread for my advanced class and I use blogs and Voicethread for my intro level class.
MONICA: Ok, how are you using Voicethread in your classes?
MERISSA: I am, for my advanced class I am doing a very cool
um, "who are you" kind of a project that uses the course concepts
so after we discuss family communication and different syles of family
communication they have to go to Voicetread and
think of, first of all post a picture of their family
and then they give examples that would show what type of family they are.
And then they're suppose to invite their family memebers and friends
to comment on whether or not they agree or disagree with that, that assumption, their examples and stuff
MONICA: and how's it working?
MERISSA: Its been fun!
The seem to react really positively overall other than the few who are computer technology-phobes
but I think that that's good for, communication students in general are, comm studies track studies students are so fearful of computers and
I think that that was one of the big reasons why I decided to do this project
is to get them using the computer.
I'm not a computer person by nature
and so I know that half of it is just sitting down and learning something
and you know if they get frustrated. One girl deleted her entire project and had to start from scratch and
yeah so they've had some ups [laughter] and downs with it I'm not gonna lie but
It's been great overall. And one girl, kristen,
um said her family and friends like were just
on it all the time and commenting on her page
and have learned to draw and phone in and do all these cool things with her project.
So the hope was that they have something cool at the end of the end of the semester and kind of keep
with them throughout life as they kinda grow, almost like a little online scrapbook
MONICA:Well that's a great idea. Did you do this assignment before you used Voicethread?
MERISSA: I did something in my intro class and actually these are some of the projects that people did
and um they're really great. They're just very personable and it's again a "who are you" project with the intro level course concepts.
And my intro level course their big complaint on my student evals was they
did have a cool kind of reflective self-project
in the advanced class and they missed that type of a thing.
So these are just kind of some of the ones they've done
and you can see like it's really kind of a neat project
and I kind of said "I want to do something for the advanced class but I think they should upgrade their skill level"
and so Voicethread was something that seemed pretty appealing that they would have the same
idea and they seemed to enjoy it just as much
MONICA: So would you agree that the outcome is much more, um, enjoyable or beneficial using Voicethread?
MERISSA: I think it will be as the group, as the tech people, I guess as our students evolve and we get more people who are tech-saavy
Right now the comm students i think some of the would really prefer to use
crayons and markers and make scrapbooks.
And there will always be that group of people but I think that they will appreciate it in the long run
the value of of learning a new tehnology for the first time.
And some of them loved it right away and probably, I think, not to be gender specific, but my guys
really don't like making scrapbooks, you know or do some of the flower projects or you can see
the cereal thing in the background or making a globe or paper macheing stuff so that's really kind of a girlie project and this makes it a lot
more gender neutral.[okay] so. It's fun.
MONICA: So how are you supporting the low-end users or like setting your expectations?
MERISSA: Well I have a very clear checklist of everything we
cover in class and what they are suppose to answer with that
but its helped them guide their answers and then I also have a rubric
for the grading scheme so they can't just RAMBLE about their family they have to
relate it to the concepts. And so that, you know, I learned from experience from last sememster,
just testing it out they would RAMBLE but I'm like "No you need to connect it to learning."
And then I gave them a "how to get started" because they were really scared and
even though Voicethread is nice though 'cause it has those little two minute "how to" but for some reason they
needed to hear it from me, so. They've done really well with it.
MONICA: And would you recommend this to other faculty?
MERISSA: Yes! I think I would not only recommend it for students to do I think I'm going to be doing an online course
this summer hopefully using Voicethread as the lecture. So that sutdents can, you know, sign in and kind of on the side ask questions
and put in comments and their own stories as they go through a lecture, so
as I start to kind of record more and more of my lectures I think it would be neat so if a student missed a day
I can post it on Voicethread and you know they would have to respond like they would in a class.
And then I can put a discussion question and everybody can, you know, I think I will actually
get rid of the blogging assignment because I like the fact that the pictures are there and for communication and interpersonal communication
it makes it really more personable to see whtat they think and everything like that
MONICA: Great well we talked about all the benefits of Voicethread but do you think there are any drawbacks?
MERISSA: Um from a teaching perspective it definately takes more time than to just assign a paper, at least in the beginning just becase
you know for the first semester I didn't have any examples either and I honestly didn't want to
give them any because I wanted them to have free reign.
I was afraid that if i did my own then they would just copy exactly what I did to think points instead of overall personality of the project.
So i think that's one of the potential drawbacks is that it does, any technology project,
it takes a little bit of time for a faculty to understand. But you know whenever I had a problem I called up you all and said okay does this sound right?
And it really helped to have you all there because I don't know if I, well first of all I woulnd't have known what Voicethread was
and second of all I wouldn't have had the courage to follow through with it
I always knew that I could send one of my students down to you all to see if they were really lost or if I was lost
MONICA: And would you change anything in the future?
With the project [mm hmm] the assignment? um I actually... I think I would require them to
find more people to comment. I think some of them who really... actually I would probably
require them to get a... what are those?...the camera, the web cam and really, so not only to see their
personality come alive on the writing but to have... some of them were really cool because they used the web cam and you could see
their voices and just more senses involved and their personality non-verbals as their talking
so I think that's something I would encourage just to increase the... I said they could use any of the different styles that they wanted.
They could phone in, what was it: phone in, text in, draw in or whatever but I think i would increase the usage, again just to get
them more comfortable with trying out new pieces of equipment
MONICA: Great. That's all I have. Any closing remarks?
MERISSA: No I think you should try it. It's worthwhile. At least I would go to the browse, the overall browse, cause you can see
that's where I started, you can see what people did and that lead me to developing the idea of what I wanted to do, so I didn't have a clear goal
for Voicethread but I say through other peoples projects how cool they could be so it gave me a lot of ideas
MONICA: Alright thanks Merissa. MERISSA: You're welcome.