Developing academic writing skills through the video essay and measuring the advantages

The aim of the project was to assess if and how creating a video essay would impact the revision process for students working on an essay. We ended up with 13 participants. The biggest challenge was getting participants. We did not get enough in Sem 1, and so had to extend the IRB and data gathering into Sem 2. While 13 is a small number, we have some rich data. We have interviews with each participant, journal entries, and the actual first draft/final submission for each essay. This has allowed us to triangulate our findings. For example, if a student claimed in the interview and journal entries that doing the video essay helped her to edit out inessential details, we can then review her draft and final essay to see if she actually did this editing. We have completed the analysis of the data and are in the process of drafting an article.