Video

Here are some tips and resources for creating more pedagogically effective videos for your courses.

Pedagogical Uses for Videos

Tony Bates lists some different pedagogical uses for videos in his book Teaching in a Digital Age:

• Demonstrate experiments or phenomena
• Illustrate principles involving dynamic change or movement
• Illustrate principles involving 3D space
• Illustrate abstract principles with physical models
• Substitute for a field visit
• Bring students primary resource or case study material
• Demonstrate how abstract principles or concepts apply to real-world problems
• Demonstrate decision-making processes
• Demonstrate correct procedures for using tools or equipment
• Demonstrate methods or techniques of performance
• Record and archive events important to topics in a course

Recording Your Own Screencast Videos

These record what you do on the computer screen as well as your microphone, sort of like Khan Academy videos.

• Canvas Studio – video platform integrated with Canvas. Canvas Studio supports webcam videos, screencast videos, as well as video quizzes. Make sure you edit and publish captions for all your videos.
• ScreenPal (formerly Screencast-o-Matic) – very reliable tool, works on older computers, used underneath the hood by Canvas Studio
• Screencastify – works in Chrome browser with Google
• OBS – Open Broadcast Software – free and open source
• Camtasia($) – commercial option that includes extra features like video editing

There are also apps for iPhone/iPad and Android for recording lessons:

• Explain Everything – best tool especially if you use PowerPoint, but costs a little if you want to create more than 3 videos
• ShowMe
• Android screen recording apps

Options for Sharing Your Videos

• Youtube – share your videos publicly or keep them unlisted.  You can create a separate playlist or Youtube channel to organize all your course videos.  Be sure to edit the captions for accessibility.
• Vimeo – for videos you want to share publicly but they are too long for Youtube
• Canvas Studio – internal video platform

Interactive Video: Embed Questions In or After Your Videos

These tools let you embed questions in your video to add some interactivity and help ensure students are actually watching them:

• H5P – free and open source collection of dozens of tools for adding interactivity to your course, including one for interactive videos linked here
• PlayPosit
• Edpuzzle

You can also add questions without using these tools.  You might embed your video at the top of a Canvas quiz, for example, and ask them to answer questions after watching the video.

Technological Tips

Keep your videos short

• The optimal length for educational videos is under 6 minutes.  Students tend to tune out on longer videos.
• Consider breaking your topic up into smaller segments spread across multiple videos.

Good audio is key

• It is much harder to pay attention to and understand a video when the audio is not clear or is muffled or there is background noise.
• Find a nice quiet place to record your screencasts.
• You can get a USB headset, for example, or a Blue microphone for even better quality.

Don’t worry about making your videos “perfect”

• Your videos may not have the polish and editing that professionally-made videos have, but they can still be effective for learning. Even editing your own videos is often unnecessary if you plan appropriately.
• Plan ahead – create a bulleted list of items you want to cover (or even a script or storyboard if you so desire) so that you do not miss something important, and so that you can pace yourself. Prepare the items you want to show in advance so students don’t have to wait while your software program launches or while you search for some file or resource.
• Start the video on your opening slide or some resource that signifies the topic of the video. If using a whiteboard or drawing software, draw the “title” of the topic at the beginning (or before the video starts). This is so that you don’t have to edit the video later to insert a title sequence.
• If you find yourself losing track of your place or you have to cough or something like that, just pause the recording, and then unpause again when you are ready. That way you don’t have to start all over. If you make a mistake that is not too major, just explain it and fix it while still recording. If you made a mistake, most likely some of your students will, too, and it helps pedagogically to discuss common mistakes.
• Your first video or two, however, may take two or more takes. It takes practice to become comfortable speaking in a timed video. Go back and listen to your videos – are you speaking too fast? Is the audio loud enough? You might record a very short practice video first just to make sure everything is coming out okay.

Use HD Quality

• In order to see the text or other small details in a screencast, you should record to HD quality video, and also during the video you might recommend to students that they press the full-screen button (on the bottom right of the video player if using Youtube) and/or switch to the HD quality version of the video (if it is on Youtube – see the gear icon for changing video quality).
• Recommended to size box in ScreenPal to “Medium HD” for screencasts.

Zoom in, select, or annotate to focus the viewer’s attention

• Even with HD quality videos, you can better help focus viewers’ attention by selecting, highlighting, marking, or even zooming into a particular aspect of the screen. Use your mouse as your pointer or as a way to provide gestures to focus attention. Many screencast tools will add a halo or circle around where the mouse is.

Pedagogical Tips

See also the article: Developing a Framework for Creating Effective Instructional Video Podcasts.

Don’t just make a video

• Recording lessons is only the first step. The next step is replacing class time with more interactive activities. If one only records lectures and does nothing else, the pedagogical benefits will likely not be that significant.

Sequencing – Should students watch video lectures before or after active learning experiences?

• Counter-intuitively, several research studies show that lectures are more effective after students have done some exploratory learning activity (like a lab, simulation, game, data analysis, etc.). When lecturing on the topic before students have had a chance to explore it or try it for themselves, students are more likely to tune out of the lecture and not retain much, because they do not see the need for learning it, or why the concepts are important, and what problems they solve. After students have had a chance to explore (and maybe fail) at something, they have more of a need to know. They have developed questions in their mind, they have run into problems that they couldn’t solve. A lecture at that point helps them see the concepts and links between their experiences, and one can also connect the concepts covered in a lecture to the previous experiences the students have had.
• See research on productive failure
• You can make videos that are open-ended instead of just explanatory lectures that give students the “answers.” You can ask students to watch a video that asks some open-ended inquiries and have students think or work on them before and during class.

Target misconceptions rather than only showing the “correct” answers

• Try to directly address potential misconceptions or mistakes and errors in the video, rather that just showing the “correct” answer or technique. See this video on Khan Academy and the effectiveness of science videos as an example.

Dialogue better than monologue

• Like in the above video, there is a lot of research (e.g., 1, 2) showing students learning more by watching a dialogue between multiple people from different perspectives rather than just a single person monologue.

Embed questions in or around your videos

• As mentioned in the previous section, one suggestion is to not show the “answer” in a video, but ask open-ended questions of the students, and have students do the work and the learning.
• And as mentioned in the above Interactive Video section, you might consider embedding questions in or around your videos.  This can have the dual effect of spurring your students to think more deeply about the concepts in the video and holding them accountable for watching the videos with something like a quiz.
• See also From Passive Viewing to Active Learning: Simple Techniques for Applying Active Learning Strategies to Online Course Videos.

Let students create the videos

• Students enjoy making screencasts and teaching each other (and the world) topics they have learned.
• They could either use their phones and the Youtube app to record and share videos, or you might use a video discussion board like FlipGrid, which integrates with Canvas.
• Here’s just one study showing the benefits of student-generated videos: Video Made the Calculus Star

Issues and Concerns about Recording Lectures

Intellectual Property

• If I record my lectures, will the university own that content and potentially replace me?  I’d recommend recording your own videos and uploading them to Youtube, so that not only do you keep control over the videos (and you can take them down when you want), but also so that people outside the university can also benefit and learn from your videos.
• If you work with the university to create videos, discuss any issues or concerns you have with your supervisor.

Copyright

• An exception to the above suggestion of using Youtube is if you video uses copyrighted materials from someone else, such as a publisher.  While you have fair use to use copyrighted materials for teaching purposes with your own students, you can’t really share those materials outside the scope of your teaching.  So for example if you are recording a screencast using a PowerPoint from your textbook publisher’s site, for example, I would put share it on Panopto or Microsoft Stream (and not Youtube), so that only students here can view it.

Class Attendance

• If you record your lectures, will students skip class?  There is some research that your class attendance might dip very slightly if you record your lectures.  But you can counteract this by increasing accountability and interactivity in your classes.  Start your class off with a question that students might answer related to the video, for example, or have an attendance policy, or add some required group activities to your class sessions.

Student Resistance

• If you pre-record videos, try peer instruction, or try anything new or different or out of the norm of traditional teaching approaches, yes, you might expect a small amount of resistance, although the research shows that actually students show greater satisfaction in classes that use these kinds of techniques.  Still, I would recommend framing what you are doing with students: explain to them why you are doing this, why it will benefit them (perhaps share research), and basically sell them on your teaching strategy.  You may have to periodically remind your students of why you are doing this, instead of only explaining it to them at the beginning of the semester.
• Here are some resources on reducing student resistance when you try something new in your courses.