The VoiceThread pilot in EDT631 completed its first week last night. Below are some of the VTs that were created and commented on. Some overall observations (please take a look yourself to help confirm them):

1. Students as a whole experienced no significant issues using the tool. 

2. The level of discussion is considerably higher than it has been in previous text-based discussions, which is probably an understatement. 

3. Students (and, consequently, the professor) increased the amount of time spent in the discussion and amount of feedback given. Using audio and web cams to make comments increases the amount of interaction exponentially.

4. Those considering use of the VoiceThread tool should be prepared to spend more time responding to students. It simply takes longer to listen to audio and web cam comments. But it's much more fun and enlivening.

5. The author (Augustsso) of a Swedish study on VoiceThread wrote: 

"[VoiceThread] supports students' reflections concerning their own and others' thoughts and emotions, supports individual students and integrates them into a work group, and develops students' identification and awareness in relation to self, a task and others."

Applying those criteria to this pilot, so far Professor Augustsso's findings seem to be borne out so far.

Sample Voice Threads from Pilot--
N.B.: When viewing comments, browse through the pages of the VT to see additional contributions from reviewers.

Bow Lee



Amanda Beasley



Robin Jones



Robin Lockerby



Supporting Research

The use of VoiceThread in higher education has been the topic of scholarly research, with several significant articles and studies:

Augustsso, G. Web 2.0, pedagogical support for reflexive and emotional social interaction among Swedish students. The Internet and Higher Education. Special Issue on Web 2.0.

Borup, J., Graham, C.R. & Velasquez, A. The Use of Asynchronous Video Communication to Improve Instructor Immediacy and Social Presence in an Online Course. In D. Gibson & B. Dodge (Eds.) Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2010. 

Brunvand, Stein and Byr, Sara. Using VoiceThread to Promote Learning Engagement and Success for All Students. The Council for Exceptional Children (CEC): TEACHING Exceptional Children.

Smith, J. & Dobson, E. Beyond the Book: Using VoiceThread in Language Arts Instruction. In T. Bastiaens et al. (Eds.) Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2009.