meetings on video

[Kim Redick <tscom009 -at- DUNX1 -dot- OCS -dot- DREXEL -dot- EDU>]

Stuart Selbar writes:

Fred, I'm actually less intersted in what students can learn from the content
and more in what students can learn from watching a professional meeting of
technical communicators. Maybe there's little value in it. I'm not sure. But I
suspect a lot of subtle things happen in those meetings that would be important
for folks wanting to enter the profession. For example, students could begin to
understand ways of interacting with professional peers, or how to ask and
answer questions at professional meetings, or what constitutes appropriate
behavior. I suspect there's much to be learned: social, political, practical,
intellectual things. Students could even try to model stuff they thought was
useful. I guess I'm equally interested in the "underlife" of these meetings.
And I'm not sure if these tapes would be useful or not. Any thoughts, anyone?
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        All in all, as a method of instruction, recorded meetings have been
underused and have a lot of potential. Not only would viewers be able to
review pertinant material, but also "train" for that oh-so-stressful first
paper presentation. What should we say? How should we say it? What
questions should we prepare for? How many others are working in our
specialization?

Also, tapes could be incorporated into discourse community, audience, and
topoi studies - or even used as a springboard into discussions on current
issues in Technical Writing. They are especially useful for students whose
method of learning is more visually-oriented/example dependent than their
peers (who can get everything they need from lecture).

Is there any one out there that uses video tapes in such a manner? Or as
part of a class in another way?

Kim Redick
Drexel University