This class was pretty straightforward. This course consists of an OA plus two performance assessments. I found an entry on reddit that suggested reading Unit 2, Unit 4, Unit 6, and Module 13 which account for 53% of the OA so that’s what I did.
Most of it was common sense stuff. Took the PA and scored 78%. Decided to go ahead and take the OA later that night to get it out of the way. Scored a 77%.
Task 1 of the performance assessment is just an outline. There is a template provided so I just filled in the blanks. For the topic, I recycled my causal essay from English Comp I … no sense in reinventing the wheel. Submitted and two days later, passed.
Task 2 was a video presentation. I hate being in front of a camera so this was out of my comfort zone. I reworded my causal essay to include verbal citations of the resources which was pretty simple. I recorded the presentation in my office at work on the weekend when no one was there and incorporated some visual elements (youtube animations) inserted into a PowerPoint that played on a monitor behind me.
For the actual recording, I used PhotoBooth on my iMac and EasyPrompter (www.easyprompter.com) so I could maintain eye contact with the camera. EasyPrompter is free, just paste your text, hit start and the text scrolls by like a teleprompter.
After I recorded the video, I ran it through iMovie and added a fade-in at the beginning and a fade-out at the end. Exported as mp4 and uploaded to Panopto. The training materials talk about recording in Panopto but this doesn’t give you the ability to add visual effects so I didn’t do that.
Once I uploaded the video to Panopto, it emailed me a link to use for submitting the work to the evaluation team. Submitted that (plus a reference doc) and waited.
Unfortunately, a day later, the recording was returned for revision because I didn’t include enough verbal citations nor did I verbally cite the visual element. I went back and looked at the rubric and nowhere did it say citing the visual element was a requirement.
The next night, I re-recorded the video using the exact same setup as before, this time including an additional verbal citation and citing the visual element. Submitted again, waited a day, then got the notification I passed.
Don’t go through all the training material. Read the modules listed above. It covers the majority of the OA.
Pro tip: Use one of your earlier essays for the speech. No need to reinvent the wheel.