This video is a humorous and slightly uncomfortable “behind-the-scenes” look at both students and teachers at the Watson conference. In opposition to the more polished scholarship—i.e. work in line with teachers’ expectations for multimedia academic writing—that the first video represents, the “Gotcha!” video shows what students want to produce. In this “behind-the-scenes” video, The Normal Group shows their well-meaning buffoonery juxtaposed against those of the teacher-scholars they observe at the Watson conference. This piece—originally intended for submission as part of the final video, “Technology’s Impact on Teaching and Learning”—speaks back to teachers (particularly those who think they don’t have anything else to learn about teaching with technology) in ways that are profound and uncomfortable, and always from the undergraduate students' perspective. The students enjoyed every minute of editing this video, making sure to include the surprise shout-out at the end (to point out their own professor's buffoonery? What, again we ask, counts as scholarship?!).

By Jessica Huang, Amos Rein, Steve LaGioia, Vince Scannell

Abstract: This video presents a montage of moments where the speakers of the 2008 Watson Conference confounded us, moments where we, as undergraduates, reacted to the teachers’ presentations. The montage serves to give viewers an idea of what we as undergraduates felt while listening to the speakers. It shows that when we were most visually stimulated, we understood and learned the most. Based in part on Hayles’ theory of deep and hyper attention, we argue that since students today are used to constant and simultaneous input from different sources, we can easily become bored with traditional, linear texts. For instance, we highlight in our video moments where speakers at the Watson conference lost our attention, bored us, or, literally, put us to sleep. We acknowledge that the conference is mainly for other teachers, not undergraduates, but through this video, we playfully question whether that assumption continues to be worthwhile in a world where digital immigrants (teachers) and digital natives (us) need to learn from each other in order to succeed.