By Eleri Syverson, MA, Joe King, Yiran Sun, MA, Yianna Vovides, PhD, Georgetown University

In this post we’ll look at the process of scripting in the context of metacognitive awareness by walking through the processes and considerations we recommend for scripting. When we talk about scripting in this case, we are referring to the writing process of reflecting on a subject and drafting — as a word-for-word script, or at minimum a very detailed outline — a lecture to be delivered to a class of students. Most of our own experience with scripting is in developing asynchronous lectures for online courses (or similar online format) that are either entirely new or are being redesigned into an online format from an existing face-to-face course, and this is our focus in this post. However, many of the principles and practices we consider can be useful in designing face-to-face presentations and interactions too. We first address the conundrum of whether to script, and then we offer a script of our own in relation to how we guide faculty through the process of scripting.

To Script or Not to Script? Script, script, and script some more….

When we first meet with an instructor who is working to design an online course, one of the things we talk about is whether they have any plans to develop new content, such as a video, audio or text lecture, for the course. For the most part, the answer is yes. We recommend the instructor script out their lecture materials before we begin to record or build them for an online course. This might sound like the last thing an instructor wants to do for several reasons:

• Perhaps they have been delivering lectures on this topic, maybe even for this very course, for many years. They may know these lectures very well, even without notes.
• Perhaps they rely on spontaneity to keep the experience fresh and therefore fear they would lose that if they scripted.
• Perhaps the time and effort commitment required to produce scripts seems daunting.

While these are valid concerns, a well-designed script will not take away from their inherent expertise on the subject or remove those elements of personality that make their lectures engaging. In fact, we emphasize that the value of scripting is less in the final product, but in the process itself which can help them plan, monitor, and evaluate their approach to each lecture anew.

During the design and development process for online courses we approach scripting, especially when working from existing materials or lectures, as a metacognitive act that relies on planning, monitoring, and evaluation about one’s own areas of expertise. By approaching scripting as a process that supports instructors in deepening their metacognitive awareness of how they teach and how their students learn, we encourage increased efficacy, coherence, and accessibility of lectures. By the end of the design and development process, instructors have accounted for the thinking of their students as well as their own and in fact have developed a lasting metacognitive practice.

A Script of our Own

In the first blog post of this series Yianna Vovides described a simple model we share with instructors to recognize the iterative process of design (see figure 1). When we think of the Before phase, we think of pre-production efforts, for During, we think of production efforts and for After, we think of post-production. Scripting is part of our pre-production efforts.

This section highlights the script we use in our process to guide instructors and we explain the thinking behind the process, our reasoning.

Script	Reasoning
If you are not sure whether or not to script your materials, you might start with a test recording to see how the lecture goes without a script.	In our process, we will often give faculty a rough cut of this initial test recording to give the instructor a chance to review this initial product and go over any concerns with them. A common observation from instructors after this initial test recording is that lecturing to a camera or microphone can be a very different experience than lecturing to a classroom full of students.
In the classroom, students nod, ask questions, and make facial expressions that signal as to their engagement and understanding. Even the lack of such signals in the classroom would, itself, be a significant sign about the lecture, your students, or something else in the environment that is impacting your teaching.	This presents a unique opportunity to reflect on one’s own thinking while teaching, and to reflect on the experience of the learner.   When lecturing in class, which moments typically brought about questions (or even were confusing to you as you learned it the first time)? Which examples do you find particularly impactful? What is essential to understanding the material? Scripting allows instructors to address these questions and plan the presentation of materials in the most helpful and more meaningful way, because it allows instructors’ time to reflect on both past and future deliveries of a lecture.

 

Through this writing process of reflection, planning, and drafting lectures as text, instructors can carefully consider meaning they intend to leave with their students, and work to ensure that their learning goals for a particular lecture are met. Writing itself is applied metacognition. “Every act of writing is an act of meaning production. Reading, re-reading, reflecting, and reviewing — processes traditionally associated with writing — serve as monitoring strategies to ensure that the production of meaning is in conformance with the author’s goals for writing…” (Hacker, Keener, Kircher 157). In scripting a lecture, instructors are not merely replicating a previously delivered lecture, but improving and adapting it for a new format. Keep in mind the following tips (and their reasonings) for writing for that new format.

Script	Reasoning
Keep your script brief and connected to learning objectives.	Remember that attention spans behave differently in the online environment than they might in face-to-face conversations. An ideal length for videos in online learning environments is 6-10 minutes, which comes out to about 2-4 pages of written text, single spaces. Audio only lectures can typically be longer, around 40 minutes to an hour. Consider the length of a typical Youtube video vs the length of a typical podcast.
Identify key terms or questions in advance. Include graphics in your script to illustrate key points. Please include the references! Once you send us the draft, we will then discuss with you how we pull all the pieces together.	By following these recommendations, post-production will be easier. It can also help you make sure that you are, in fact, addressing all of your learning objectives and covering all of the necessary topics in the video. This kind of metacognitive planning and evaluation of your student’s thinking increases the efficacy and coherency of your lectures.
In the same vein, this planning allows you to choose the most appropriate format for lectures.	You might script a lecture you have been giving face-to-face in the classroom for many years, only to realize that in the online format, the lecture may be more suited to a podcast format than a video. Different formats present other advantages to students as well — for example, an audio-only podcast lecture would allow students to listen on a walk around their neighborhood, as opposed to at home with the distractions of noisy family or roommates. Presenting content in a variety of formats, while letting the content direct the format chosen, provides students with additional flexibility. And choosing a format after planning the content, rather than as a first step, allows you this flexibility to present the content that is most suitable for the format itself.
Scripting and preplanning lecture materials not only forces you to consider the needs of your students and how they might interpret lecture material, it inherently addresses some of those needs by making materials more accessible	Transcripts not only benefit students with hearing impairments, but also students who may be listening to materials in their non-native language, students who are experiencing poor internet connectivity and cannot stream the video, students with learning disabilities who may need more time or alternate formats to process the lecture, or students who simply prefer to read or take notes on the transcript while listening along. Producing a transcript of a lecture can itself be time consuming or, if you outsource the effort, costly task. By creating a word-for word script and drafting it with your audience in mind, providing your script to students as a transcript eliminates the need to produce a separate transcript to address the accessibility concerns noted above.
It is important that you include your sources in your script to be incorporated into the video.	While a lecture video isn’t a peer-reviewed paper, it is more formal and more lasting than a face-to-face lecture or conversation, and it takes some additional effort to communicate corrections of any errors. Including sources also gives you an opportunity to review the sources and correct any errors, and gives interested students the opportunity to engage more deeply with the subject by exploring these sources.

 

Scripting lectures is a multi-layered metacognitive process. It requires the writer to think about their own thinking in reflecting on their own understanding of the material and past deliveries lectures. It also requires them to think about the experience of their audience, both in who they are and the context and channels which will affect the composition of their experience. Successful lecture scripting means making sure the material feels like it is for these students in this course.

• Who are the students?
• What they have already learned, what you hope they will learn, and where they are now?
• Where might they be listening to these lectures?
• How can the writer best facilitate their understanding?

These questions should be considered not just in regards to a specific group of current students, but future students or others who may view the lecture in a different context. A lecture might be relocated to a different part of a course, or sometimes a different course entirely. The social and historical context in which a lecture was recorded can change in just weeks. While the process of scripting might seem daunting, it should be thought of as a reallocation of efforts rather than an additional one: the metacognitive processes of reflection on self and audience, as well as the product of the script itself, contribute to a more robust and longer-lasting lecture that better addresses the needs of the audience.

Reference

Hacker, D. J., Kircher, J. C., & Keener, M. C. (2010). Writing is Applied Metacognition. In 1132034699 853417179 D. J. Hacker, 1132034700 853417179 J. Dunlosky, & 1132034701 853417179 A. C. Graesser (Authors), Handbook of metacognition in education (pp. 154-176). New York: Routledge.