Optimisation of CERN tools & methods for e-learning: The case of short online tutorials

The term “e-learning” is directly related to the practice of distance education, which started about one hundred and fifty years ago. At this time, it was possible for lecturers to teach using means such as mail, phone, radio or television. With the progress made in the field of telecommunications, the Internet and the web allowed people to drastically extend their ability to learn through various means, avoiding the constraints of location and time. It is often difficult to know exactly what is covered by the word “e-learning”. The concepts of MOOC or blended learning are very popular nowadays, whereas fewer people know precisely what rapid e-learning is. This particular type of distance education is often used for quickly teaching procedures to people, using, for example, short online video tutorials. This form of education will be the one focused on for this thesis. We collaborated for six months with the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), to provide an analysis and recommendations regarding the creation of short online video tutorials. Our primary aims were: assessing the technologies already available on the web, i.e. free, open-source and cross-platform screen recording tools. Also providing recommendations concerning the best practices and pedagogical recommendations to take into consideration for the creation of content. Taking user-related variables into account can ensure the success of an e-learning project, despite the technological features which seem, often, more important to people than the pedagogical principles. To achieve these goals, we gathered all necessary information to define which tools and content would be the most appropriate for our project. We assessed eight potentially relevant screen recording packages and compared them according to a selection of criteria. We also found that dealing with open-source and free packages was more demanding than with proprietary and profit-oriented ones. In this context, we concluded with recommendations for the use of three easy to use screen recording tools for the lecturers, depending on their preferred Operating System (OS). Also, a terminal recording tool for processes achieved in a shell. We also provided a set of pedagogical recommendations to create a good short online tutorial. We also discussed future work regarding rapid e-learning at CERN.