Academic style with substance: a collaborative screencasting project to support referencing skills

Purpose - This paper seeks to report the initial phase of a cross-institutional screencasting project designed to provide digital, multimedia support for referencing skills. Use of screencasting software, with strong educational design, has the potential to asynchronously reach all learners, regardless of mode of study, and this paper focus on the transferability of the principles and skills in this project to other contexts and institutions. Design/methodology/approach - The referencing tutorial makes use of dual coding theory to provide an aligned visual and auditory learning experience and is discussed in reference to the current literature. The foundation of the project was collaboration between the academic libraries and lecturers in the field of academic learning skills. The pedagogical and technical design and challenges are discussed, with a view to incorporating feedback into further iterative development stages. Findings - This paper finds that screencasting has been used to effectively support the development of referencing skills across a diverse student cohort, but recognises that further, in-depth analysis will be required to determine the impact of the project. It also provides an example of a low-cost project which could be replicated by other institutions to positively frame referencing within the context of broader academic writing. Originality/value - The paper provides an overview of a short project to collaboratively develop a screencast and add value to existing referencing resources (which are predominantly text-based). The design approach situates referencing within an academic writing continuum seeking to explicitly provide a rationale for the mechanics of referencing, whilst also acknowledging the challenges presented by a rapidly changing information environment.