Scholarly Life of a Committed Technofile

Ever wonder why/how we lose our students in web based coursework? Maybe various screen capture tools will help us figure it out? Last week I read about Robot Reply, a tool that will track what web site visitors do while on the website and thought “cool, maybe this tool will work!”

I’ve wanted to have students screen capture their work on the web, especially after I’ve asked them to work with a new technology. Last year I tried having students download a free 30 day trial of Captivate to record their sessions as they were working with a new technology. Don’t ask…it was messy. I like this idea of Robot Reply, where you set up the capturing to be done on the webpage/server side…nothing to ask of the students. However, it appears you have to have a lot of control over your webpages to add a line of code to the bottom of every page on the website. This wouldn’t be a problem with CSS coded websites; however, it still implies that you have access to the website. The “new” tools I’m using are usually web-based and hosted off site. And I can imagine many instructors wanting to track how their students move their a course management system…yeah, get access to that base code, snort!

But I’m excited to find Robot Replay. As I played with it and a website I did have some control, a wiki I’m playing with, I realizing that the wiki has templates. This summer I was going to have students construct a class wiki. I think I’ll combine these tools and track what the students do this summer with the wiki.

I also found CamStudio, a free screen capture software, as I was writing this blog entry. I think I’m also going to spend a little time trying to find some open source screen capture softwares to re-attempt the work I did last spring. That type of screen capture work might have to wait until next fall.