For this assignment, students work in small groups to create and edit short video presentations (flexible in genre) to recast their research for a new audience. Students then reflect on their presentations.

Guide to Oral/Signed Communication in Writing Classrooms


 

Objective

To remediate the findings of a research project into a different genre; to work together in a team to produce and edit a short video; to practice oral communication skills in the context of a video; to reflect on the entire course and the research project.

Key Terms

oral presentations; video editing; multimodality; metacognition; remediation of research into a new genre

Part 1: Video

  1. Prepare (alone or with 1-2 partners) a recorded video presentation that somehow draws upon your research and what you’ve learned about songs or albums this semester.
  2. Make sure that your video is at least 1 minute long, but ideally less than 3 minutes long, for every student participating. Each partner should be prominent in the video, though there is no need to divide the time exactly evenly.
  3. Work together to create a topic; you may draw on some or all of the participants’ major research papers, but your topic does not need to be directly connected to everyone’s papers as long as it clearly reflects what you’ve learned in the course.
  4. Choose from the following (by no means exhaustive) list of creative possibilities for the form of your presentation:
    • writing and performing an original song
    • performing a monologue (as yourself or in character as an author, poet, character, etc. from course/research sources)
    • making an original music video for a song
    • giving a “TED Talks”-style mini-lecture teaching how to analyze a given exhibit source
    • creating a video review of an exhibit source
    • making a film “trailer” for a biopic or documentary that you envision of one of the authors you researched/encountered

Part 2: Reflections/Analysis/Explanation

  1. Write an explanation and analysis of your Video Presentation (at least 200 words; up to half of this may be co-written with your partners), explaining how it was informed by your research and what you learned this semester.
  2. Mention at least 5 specific sources (background, exhibit, and/or argument) that fed or inspired your project. Point to specific moments in your video.
  3. Note some things you wanted people to notice or take away from your video.