Annotated presentations are slideshows augmented by captions, animations, and voice-overs. The annotations are designed to emphasize, augment, or better explain the information being presented. At a minimum, an annotated presentation consists of a set of slides and a voice-over, but more advanced users can add animations, drawings, quizzes, and more. Annotated presentations are usually provided in the form of a video, although it is also possible to annotate slideshows the viewer can advance at their own pace, with annotations appearing in a predetermined order.
While it's possible to create annotated presentations in a variety of ways, the focus of this toolkit will be on taking a slideshow created in a stand-alone application (such as PowerPoint or Keynote) and using Camtasia as screen-capture and editing software. If you're a student, faculty, or staff member at UBC, you're eligible for a full, free license of the Windows and Mac versions of Camtasia, a program which integrates screen-capture and video-editing software. To find out more about getting a license, click here.
How do they support learning?
Annotated presentations are just one way of many to create video which supports learning. Some uses for annotated presentations in learning include:
light boardCreating tutorials. Creating tutorials for students to study from.
light boardHighlight the concepts Highlighting or drawing attention to concepts or components that are important for students to pay attention to.
light boardStorytelling Telling a story using images and annotations as a guide.
light boardHuman element Providing an instructor presence in an online environment by including a human element in instructional material.
For the purposes of the page, an annotated presentation was developed, following the directions laid out in the 'How Do I Do It?' section. The slides were created in Microsoft PowerPoint 2013, the presentation was recorded and edited in Camtasia Studio 8, and a Logitech headset microphone was used to record the audio.
Here are download links to the resources used in the presentation. All worksheets have been filled out. The blank versions are available in the pre-production resources section.
A mixture of PowerPoint and Camtasia animations were used. While a the presentation is good example of an annotated presentation, there's definite room for improvement.
The presentation is five minutes and thirty seconds long, which is pushing it. Moving more complex material (like the question about layer thickness) to later videos would be a solution.
While the headset is a relatively nice microphone, a standalone microphone with a pop filter would help eliminate the occasional audible popping and smacking noises. The worst parts were manually edited out, which took some time.
Start-to-finish, the presentation took slightly under four hours to produce. An hour was spent planning and storyboarding, another hour spent designing the slides, half an hour writing and editing the script, slightly under half an hour to record the presentation, and an hour to edit, upload, and review. Because a lot of time was invested in planning, recording could be done relatively swiftly. In any sort of video production, the lion's share of the time should be spent in pre- and post-production work: plan accordingly!
Being able to re-use lecture slides would save time, and practice and familiarity with editing software will speed the process along, too.
What do I need?
In order to create an annotated presentation, you'll need a computer, a set of slides, a microphone, and software to record your screen and edit your presentation. If you own a laptop and an external microphone, you can download all the software you need for free, and get started.
For an overview of how UBC professor Rosie Redfield creates her videos, take a look at this.
Hardware
While computers won't be discussed (most computers should be powerful enough to record and edit a screencast) your choice of microphone will greatly affect the quality of your DIY media project.
Microphones
Here are a few useful links if you're looking at microphones.
Free core functionality, unlimited storage, some premium/paid features
Once you've created your slides, get comfortable with presenting them on your computer: make them full screen, and do a couple of practice runs of your presentation. If you aren't, become familiar with how the presentation words. Does a click go to the next slide, trigger the next animation, or make your mouse show up? Can you move backwards and forwards? Can you hide your mouse? The more familiar you are with your presentation, the less you'll have to think about when you're recording it.
While Camtasia is recommended, due to the features and free license for UBC students, staff, and faculty, basic presentations can be recorded entirely within PowerPoint or Keynote, and there are a wide variety of other editing programs you can explore. Recording an annotated presentation is very similar to recording a screencast: the [screencasting toolkit] has a wealth of information.
Camtasia is a dedicated screencasting and video editing tool. For tutorials and help, have a look at the Using Camtasia section of the DIY Media website.
To find out how to get a license for Camtasia, click here.
Mac OS X Snow Leopard (and higher) includes built-in screen recording tools. You can then edit your footage in iMovie or any other video editing software you have installed.
Camstudio is free and open-source. While it hasn't been updated since late 2013, it will record your screen and audio perfectly and has basic editing and annotating functions.
check Search for existing content on your topic. (Do you need to create or can you curate?)
check Identify potential impact (Why am I doing this? Who will benefit? What will it change?)
check Define objectives (What will people learn?)
check Develop an assessment plan (How will I know if I achieved my goals?)
check Gather equipment (see the What Do I Need? section)
check Create a test file to practice using the software
check Export test file formats and import in editing software to ensure you can work with the files
check Determine timeline
Curate or Create? Does a similar resource to what you're envisioning already exist? You can check Creative Commons licensed sources and resources in the Public Domain to start with.
If there are images, slide sets, or other works you want to use, which are appropriately licensed, ask yourself if you can build some context around them specific to your goals. Do you need to create something new, or can you curate content by building activities or context around resources that already exist? Here's an example of curated content, which took the form of adding discussion question, a self-assessment segment, and more, to a YouTube video describing MOOCs.
Objectives. Identifying broad goals can help you define what your students should learn and understand, while the objectives provide specific and measurable outcomes (Gagne, Wager, Golas & Keller, 2005 in Frey and Sutton, 2010).
What do you want your audience to learn while watching your presentation?
Which approach is best-suited to support that learning: going through solutions to problems? Reviewing previous slide sets? Something else entirely?
What features does your project need to have to accomplish your goals? Do you need animations and quizzes, or can you get away with slides and voice-over?
Impact. Consider the potential impact your project will have on the learning environment. How will learners use the video/slides? Will you need to create guiding questions, things to watch for, and follow up activities, so learners can use what they've learned? You might want to think about what activities the presentation can replace (tutorial, lecture) and how you can use that time for other activities to support the learning from the presentation. Additionally, knowing the needs of your learners helps you target the content and approach to them, making it more likely that you'll be producing a useful learning resource.
Assessment. Consider the measures you'll be using to check that your presentation had the desired impact on learning: did test scores or performance in collaborative activities improve? A good instructional design principle is to check for alignment between learning objectives, assessment, and the activities associated with the presentation.
Test. Once you have gathered your equipment and software, experiment with it. Test everything: create a five-second presentation and audio track, and export them to your editing software to familiarize yourself with the process and reveal any issues with file format or audio quality you'll want to fix before production. Make sure your chosen tools can do what you need them to.
Timeline. Check with colleagues who have made annotated presentations to get a sense of how long your project should take. If this is your first time producing an annotated presentation, allow a lot more time than you think you need.
Plan Your Project Worksheets:Video, Audio, Screencast: Guides to help you work out the learning objectives, content and associated learning activities.
TIPS:
Consider the aim of the presentation and limit yourself to what's possible in a 3-5 minute time frame.
Consider what your viewers will need in order to learn from what you are presenting.
Plan out the timeframe for scripting, recording, and editing. Allow a an additional 20% to account for unexpected delays or issues. Assuming you're familiar with the software and tools, a good rule of thumb is to allow 3-4 minutes of pre- and post-production work for every minute of footage. (From Penn State's Instructor's Guide to Media Activities.)
Test out your equipment beforehand to ensure that recording goes smoothly. You might catch computer, audio, or file format issues which you can solve before recording, as well as ensuring that you have all the required equipment, and that it all works properly.
check Chunk your content into 3-6 minute segments.
check Review principles for learning, instruction and multimedia development.
check Create a script.
check Design your slides for presentation.
Every minute you spend planning your project is worth two or three minutes of designing, recording, and editing. Before you do anything else, download and fill out this worksheet. Here's the completed worksheet for the example presentation. Try to be as detailed as possible: it'll make life easier later on.
Chunk content
One of the most important features in the planning worksheet is the 'Generate Concepts' section. This will help you break your content down into easily digestible sections, a technique also known as chunking content. Chunking content involves breaking down large themes into manageable chunks or concepts: for example, if you intend to cover 4 concepts in a single video of 20 minutes, breaking the long video into four five-minute chunks will make it likelier that the material will be watched and effectively absorbed. Recent research indicates that the optimal length for student engagement is 6 minutes or less. (Guo, 2013).
Review principles
UBC's Design Principles for Multimedia provides an overview and basic framework for considering evidence based principles when designing multimedia for learning.
After you've selected one chunk to start with, you can fill out this storyboarding worksheet. Here's the completed storyboard for the example project. You can fill this out however you want to: for more traditional video projects, storyboards usually include sketches of each scene with notes attached, but you can feel free to use text, draft your script, draw each slide, sketch diagrams you might use, or some combination of those and other techniques.
Writing a script will save you time in the longs run. Include what you want to say, and when you want to say it, with respect to the slides you plan on using. Note transitions between slides, and animations. Once your script is complete, you'll get a sense of the flow of your project and can make decisions about editing more easily.
Make sure to rehearse your script(s), to avoid unnecessary pauses or verbal stumbles when you're recording.
Note which slide will be on-screen while you're speaking. Some people find it useful to include pictures of the slides in the script, to remind them of what the viewer will see while they're speaking.
Time your script to ensure it fits within the 3-6 minute timeframe you should be aiming for.
Try to write naturally: not only will people learn better (Mayer's 10th principle) but it'll be easier to read from: encountering the words it is when you'd usually say 'it's is distracting, and can throw you off.
Review your presentation for extraneous material, and remove it: the occasional anecdote or tangentially related point is fine, but the shorter your video is, the likelier it'll be watched to completion, and staying focused on your topic is important. (Mayer's 1st principle.)
Even if you already have slides, you'll want to look over this section: there are differences between making slides for a lecture, and slides for a presentation.
Include a title slide, and an overview slide. When recording, use these slides to take a few seconds and provide some general information about the presentation, and preview what will be covered. (Mayer's 7th principle).
Make sure the aspect ratio of your slides is 16:9, instead of the standard 4:3. This will alter the spacing of your content, but it'll prevent your video from being surrounded by black bars, or letterboxed, on modern devices.
Use animations and transitions sparingly. Anything that unnecessarily slows down your presentation should be eliminated, as should anything that distracts from your content. When you use transitions and animations, keep them simple: fade in, fade out, and simple wipes. (Mayer's 1st principle).
Use images with text to clarify, as opposed to the other way around. You're going to be speaking over the slides: removing text encourages listeners to focus on what you're saying. Highlight and explain key words, and keep text physically close to relevant images. (Mayer's 3rd and 4th principles).
Include an ending/review slide to help underscore important points.
Always keep in mind that you'll be speaking over your slides. Give yourself room to talk, and pace any transitions/animations so they fit with the flow of what you're saying.
Leave room on your slides for annotations (if you'll be drawing on them) and your face (if you're going to use a talking head). The slides that work in lectures will need modifying if you want to use them in an annotated presentation.
check Source any additional content that you will be editing in (b-roll).
check Familiarize yourself with copyright resources and guidelines.
Set up your recording environment
Managing a microphone, script, and computer at the same time is harder than it sounds. Talking, using the mouse, and reading from a script at the same time requires that you split your attention. You'll get the best presentation if you set everything up so it's easy to use.
Put your script somewhere you can easily read from it. Don't worry about making noise when you're turning pages, if you have more than one: stop speaking when you turn the page, and keep going once you're settled again: and you can cut the noise the paper makes out when you're editing.
Position your microphone so it picks your voice up well. If you don't have a stand, make one or consider investing: a moving microphone doesn't capture audio as well as a still one. Record some test clips, and make sure your pop filter is close to your microphone.
Make sure that you can use your mouse, pen, or keyboard easily: sit within reach of everything you need.
Make sure you won't be interrupted. Put a sign on your door, or move somewhere you won't be disturbed.
Try to eliminate background noises. Record somewhere quiet, turn off other electronics, and close your door. To improve audio quality, try to record in a room which has soft furniture: bare, hard walls can give your voice a tinny quality.
Make sure your computer desktop is clear, and that you've closed any unrelated programs. Disable notifications: you don't want a popup letting you know you have a new email appearing in the middle of your presentation. If you record a lot of presentations, think about keeping an alternate account on your computer which has none of those pesky programs enabled.
Audio
The quality of your audio factors greatly into the perception of your video: a small increase in audio quality is worth a much larger increase in video quality.
Speak slowly and clearly. Take a trial run, and play it back to yourself: you might be surprised by how quickly you're talking.
Reduce echoes by recording in a room with soft surfaces, such as your living room. Reduce or eliminate electrical sounds such as computer fans and other appliances.
It might look a bit silly, but making a fort out of couch cushions and recording your audio inside of it will mimic the effect of the padding used in recording studios, and improve the quality of your audio.
Avoid rooms with echoes or fans: even imperceptible fan sounds may be picked up by an external mic.
Use a noise-reducing microphone, buy or build a pop filter, and keep the mic close to your mouth.
Recording
For tutorials on how to use Camtasia, have a look at TechSmith's series of videos, linked at the bottom of the page. They'll have you up-and-running in no time.
Test your software and equipment! This is in bold because it's really, really important. The first time you record a presentation, first, record a five-second presentation and make sure everything works. This includes checking audio and video quality, making sure you can edit the files, and exporting the files to a video. This will help you catch any problems before you've invested hours of work.
Record in small chunks so that you can edit them more easily later. There's nothing wrong with recording in two-minute chunks.
Try to record all your audio at the same time: if you have to take down your equipment and set it up again, the audio will sound different.
If you feel like you're going too quickly, or something else is going wrong, just stop talking. Take a moment or two to collect your thoughts, and start again. You can easily remove sections you don't want when editing.
If you have to turn the page on your script, stop talking, and then change the page. That way, you can edit out the noise of flipping paper without losing important information.
Stick to your script. If you have a great idea that you want to include, stop the recording, and update your script. Having a script makes life much easier: it prevents you from stumbling over your words, keeps you from forgetting anything, and keeps you on track and on time.
Camtasia Studio 8 comes with a plugin for Microsoft PowerPoint 2013, which can simplify the recording process. However, PowerPoint 2013 is the only software which has plugin functionality with Camtasia. In the example presentation, a different technique was used to capture the full-screen presentation, which will work with any software which features a full-screen mode.
Begin recording your screen, with the presentation in the normal (not full-screen) mode.
Open your presentation in full-screen mode.
Begin speaking and presenting as normal. After you're done recording, you can edit the section at the beginning (putting your presentation into full-screen mode) out. If you're concerned about being able to find the exact start of your presentation, snap your fingers near your microphone just before you start recording: it'll show up as a sharp spike on the audio track.
Production Resources
Tips and tricks
Here are instructions to export in HD and integrate quiz features in the Mac and PC versions of Camtasia.
Software
Camtasia downloads (Camtasia for Mac, Camtasia Studio for PC). Note: UBC has a campus wide license key that you can enter after downloading the trial versions.
B-roll Content: you're probably familiar with shots of crowds, parks, or freeways in news articles or documentaries, which help transition from one scene to another. This content, which can frequently be found online under free-use licenses, is referred to as b-roll, and can help provide a background for a point you don't have a slide for, or help introduce or close a video.
Add media to enhance interest - This is referred to as b-roll content and can include examples, still images, videoclips or freely available content licensed for re-use or in the public domain.
Make sure to focus on audio quality - high quality audio is the single most important thing that will elevate the professionalism of your video.
When recording, start with the end in mind, and aim for that in your production.
check Get feedback on a rough cut of your media from learners.
When editing, try to remove anything which isn't necessary: the shorter your video, the likelier it will be watched and effectively absorbed. Ask yourself if you can remove content and still communicate your point. If you can't cut anything, but feel like your video is too long, consider splitting it into multiple parts.
If you chunked your content, stuck to your script, and followed the advice in the recording section, the only problems you encounter while you're editing should be specific to the software you're using. Have a look at the Camtasia toolkit and post-production tools section of this toolkit for advice regarding specific pieces of editing software.
Including a title slide with a brief overview of the material you plan on covering can help set a learner's expectations. Branded title slides are available from UBC. Click here for more information.
TIPS:
Don't use too many transitions. This goes double for anything flashy or distracting.
Use the 'remove noise' filter in your editing software to take out background noise.
Pick one piece of editing software and stick to it as much as possible. It'll make your life a lot easier.
Ensure you're using a suitable device to edit. Check that your computer has enough hard drive space to store your production, and enough processing power to render it.
check Consider reach. If you want a wide reach for your audience, choose an open hosting environment (like YouTube).
check Consider privacy. If you need a certain amount of protection around your content, choose a locally hosted option (like Kaltura).
check Consider usability - if your presentations are long and learners need to be able to search key words consider using a tool like Mediasite.
YouTube is an option if you don't require privacy or security settings for your videos. YouTube enables you to share your video with the world, reach a wide audience, and students don't need an account to view it. Set up your own YouTube account, or use UBC's account with this documentation.
Kaltura is a UBC-hosted service and therefore offers a layer of security and content moderation. Kaltura offers options for learning activities that require students to record, upload and share video content through Connect. Compared to YouTube, Kaltura offers more granular control over content and contributors. Here are two documentations, detailing how to upload your video to Kaltura and how to share videos.
In addition to providing learners with the video, giving access to the slides you used can be helpful if people want to follow along with your presentation, or retain a text-based copy for future reference.
After you've finished your project, let us know! Get in touch with the CTLT to have your media added to the list of examples, and to join the DIY community!
TIPS:
Review your video with colleagues and double check if your video is delivering the message or story you would like it to.
Seek audience feedback about the resources you produce and use it to evaluate and improve.
