Screencasting and keylogging as pedagogical tools to enhance writing skill development
(2019) 27th EUROCALL conference — Location: Louvain-la-Neuve (28.August.2019)
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- Abstract
- The value of videotaping for pedagogical purposes has long been recognized in matters related to speech (Fukkink et al. 2011). By videotaping a spoken interaction and showing the video to the interactants, for example, one can make them aware of their own behaviour and, eventually, help them improve their interaction skills. Thanks to technological developments, it has also become possible to record writing as it takes place on a computer. Both the screen can be captured (‘screencasting’) and the keys struck on the keyboard (‘keylogging’). These technologies have successfully been used to gain insights into the writing process (Séror 2013). In this presentation, it will be shown that screencasts and keylog files can also be used as pedagogical tools, as suggested recently by some scholars like Ranalli et al. (2018). Within the frame of the PROCEED (PROcess Corpus of English in EDucation) project, university EFL students are required to write an essay in a computer lab at least twice a year. While they write the text, their screen and keyboard activity is recorded by means of OBS (for screencasting) and Inputlog (for keylogging; Leijten & Van Waes 2013). This material will serve as a basis for a pedagogical intervention. Students who volunteer will receive their screencast video and will be asked to watch it and answer a questionnaire aimed at eliciting their reactions and getting them to notice features of their writing behaviour. Each of these students will then be invited for an interview, where some of the issues mentioned in the questionnaire will be further discussed. During the interview, students will also be presented with the process graph produced for their text by Inputlog, which includes visual information about pausing time, revision behaviour and use of external resources. They will be shown a similar graph from a highly proficient writer and will be encouraged to compare the two graphs and to identify winning strategies. At the end of the interview, students will be asked to fill in another questionnaire whereby they will evaluate their perceived usefulness of the pedagogical intervention. The answers to the questionnaires will be analysed and complemented with elements from the interviews. It is expected that, by becoming observers of their own writing behaviour, learners will be more aware of aspects of it that could be improved. If this is confirmed, screencasting and keylogging could be adopted by teachers as useful pedagogical tools to improve their students’ writing skills.
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Gilquin, G. (2019). Screencasting and keylogging as pedagogical tools to enhance writing skill development. 27th EUROCALL conference, Louvain-la-Neuve. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/220422