Hi Amie,

Right now we have been using IVV’s mainly as homework supplements. We have found that it is important to assign a small amount of completion credit for each Vignette. We have started by developing IVVs on topics that are particularly challenging, but we are working to branch out into all the major (and even some minor) topics.

Hi Amie,

We’re trying to use the Biology vignettes as out of class “priming” activities. Our goal is to help students understand some basic concepts before getting to class. Then we can use class time for activities to build on their knowledge.
Kate

Hi Beth,

Yes, IVVs are web-based, and given that videos are incorporated, a reasonably good connection makes things work more smoothly.

The IVVs we’ve been working on are all aimed at the introductory college level, but many (if not all) could easily be used at the high school level. But there is no reason a vignette couldn’t be made to target any audience one wants. We have plans to expand the content to include much of the standard introductory physics curriculum and some others are experimenting with vignettes in biology. There is also software that will allow anyone to make a vignette, so the sky is the limit in terms of what someone can produce and for which audience.

There are tracking tools built into the software so that an instructor can determine things like how many students completed the vignette and the amount of time spent on each part of the vignette. This is very useful for research purposes.

Beth,
The vignettes we are using in our research have tracking tools built in. However, the ones we distribute on www.compadre.org/ivv do not. The reason is that maintaining a back-end server with a database is too much work for an average teacher.
One of the challenges we are working on now is finding ways for teachers to use vignettes easily. If we end up partnering with a publisher or online homework system, then tracking tools will probably be there.
The first page of any vignette you download from www.compadre.org/ivv is a logon page asking for the student’s name. The last page of the vignette is a certificate page that shows the logon name along with information like the date and the time required to complete the vignette. The student prints this and turns it in to get completion credit.

We’ve tried letting a few college students make their own vignettes in advanced lab courses, but like any project involving video it can take a lot of effort. It might actually work better with eighth graders. Even though making them takes time, we enjoy what we’re doing!
The software lets people view the vignette right away in a web browser on their own computer. Putting a vignette on the Internet is harder, especially as schools get more restrictive about faculty running their own servers. For a class project, though, looking at it in class should be fine.

8th graders and middle schoolers are highly motivated by video production, so this just seems like the perfect fit!

Thanks. We began the project about five years ago in Physics at RIT and Dickinson College. A group at Bethel University is running a project to make vignette-like activities for advanced physics labs using our software. Last year a group at RIT and Alfred University has started making vignettes in Biology. I agree that the idea could be used in many disciplines.

I hope your daughter is happy with her M.S. program at RIT! Thanks for your comments!

Kate

Jeremy, the analytics we are collecting during the research phase tell us how long students spend on each page, what multiple-choice answers they select, how many times they click on a video during video analysis measurements, and the order in which they proceed. The reason I mention order is that we can have “branching” multiple-choice questions where each answer choice leads to a different next page. Up to now we’ve been concentrating on learning gains so I can’t report anything about usage yet.
As I said in a reply above, whether or not analytics survive in the final product depends on how we end up partnering with organizations that run servers with databases. The analytic-free vignettes we create, and the Vignette Studio tool itself, will remain available for download free-of-charge.

Yes, Derek Muller, creator of veritasium.com, did the Bullet-Block experiment with us two summers ago. He made a series of YouTube videos about it https://youtu.be/vWVZ6APXM4w and we made a vignette http://www.compadre.org/ivv/vignettes/bulletBlo....

We are really glad you will be joining us this summer for our AAPT workshop! I have been using the IVVs in my introductory physics courses for multiple semesters now and I can tell you firsthand that students really like these. They are not boring lectures and student comments have been overwhelmingly positive in terms of the IVVs themselves and how they have helped their learning of concepts.

Yes, I can see vignettes being used in so many different ways. They are limited only by the imagination of the professor/teacher.