Creating screencasts

What have we got here?

Creating screencasts is a self-paced, online course that you can start, finish or just dip into at any time. It's one of a growing catalogue of Skills Journey courses for learning professionals. You can buy this course on its own or subscribe to the whole catalogue.

Is this course right for me?

The course is aimed at digital content designers, software developers, software users, trainers, marketers – in fact just about anyone who wants to create software demos. It assumes no technical knowledge other than basic computer skills. If you already have software suitable for creating screencasts, that’s fine. If you don’t, you’ll find out on the course what’s needed to do a good job.

What will I learn?

This course will enable you to:

• identify when a screencast is right for your subject
• develop a compelling idea and identify examples that are useful to your learners
• focus only on the parts of your subject that matter
• record a screencast that matches your learner’s environment
• edit your screencast to remove errors
• publish and share your screencasts

How long will it take?

Well, it all depends.

• If you’re curious about something or you need to know urgently how to carry out a task, you could get in, get what you want and get out again in less than 10 minutes.
• If what you need is a quick appreciation of the subject matter covered by the course, you could watch all the lesson videos in an hour, give or take. You’d be better off spreading this over a few days, but if an hour is all you’ve got, then go ahead and binge.
• Our courses are roughly equivalent in scope to a one or two day classroom event. If you were to spend a whole day on one of our courses, perhaps spread over a week or two, you’d be able to complete all the activities and begin applying your new skills to your work.

How does it all work?

To help you build your screencasting skills we have provided you with eight lessons, each of which includes a short video and sometimes an optional activity to complete. We have also provided you with a number of resources that you can use for on-going reference, including tips and links to useful tools.

In lessons one to six we’ll cover what screencasts are, the formats, the characteristics of good screencasts, the design process, the tools and ways to distribute your screencast. In lessons seven and eight we’ll see how that looks in practice as we go through the design and development process for a short screencast.

Download the course info sheet.