This week the students in my global studies course finished up the short informational videos that they were creating about Egypt and Libya. Overall, they did a bang-up job. (We’ll be making some of the videos public later this week). One part of the grades for their videos was “can your classmates learn from your work?” Because these videos were intended to be informational videos, the answer should be yes. Rather than just answering that question hypothetically, I had the students “hit the streets” so to speak to find out if people could learn from their videos.

The Process
Three weeks ago my students put together a seven question survey about current events in Libya and Egypt. They used a Google Form to make it easier to summarize the data they collected. Then I sent them off with their netbooks to survey students and staff throughout the school. They surveyed people in the cafeteria, in study halls, and in the library. When they finished we looked at the data and realized that many of the people in our school were not sure where Libya and Egypt are and what was going on in those countries.

Because we don’t have access to iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, my students used JayCut to create their short (3-5 minute) informational videos. The videos had to provide answers to each of the survey questions. When their videos were done we watched them in class before going out to the cafeteria, study halls, and library to show them to other students. After watching the videos my students asked their viewers to take the survey again to see if their viewers actually did learn something from watching the video.

How do you assess student video creation projects? Please leave a comment.