Instructional guide on using Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) to enhance teachers' video lectures
This instructional guide was created at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, to help teachers create visually engaging video lectures.
Category: elearning development; multimedia
Attributes: technical writing
Tools: OBS (Open Broadcaster Software); YouTube; Google Doc
Target Audience: teachers
Year: 2020
Analyze
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine, a lot of my colleagues were struggling with the shift to online teaching. One of their main complaints was that students were not paying attention or fully engaging with the class material.
To address this issue, I created a 45-page instructional guide that showed instructors how to set up and use Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) to enhance their online teaching presence.
The complete guide can be found here. In the section below, I showcase specific elements that were incorporated into the guide to further help readers understand the material.
Design and Development
Given the length of the guide, I included a Table of Contents that would help readers easily navigate the 45-page Google Doc.
In addition, I built in a "midway checkpoint" so that OBS beginners had a moment to pause and double-check their progress.
I also made sure to include screenshots and other visuals throughout the guide to help those who are visual learners. The annotations in certain visuals were meant to highlight important details that I did not want readers to miss.
Finally, I included a number of YouTube video supplements throughout my guide, which reinforced the written details. Again, this was to help those who learn better/quickly through visuals instead of text.
Implementation and Evaluation
I shared my guide on Reddit, specifically teaching-related subreddits such as r/professors and r/teachers. It was met with overwhelmingly positive responses, some of which I have screenshotted below:
