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Instructional Videos

Why use videos in education?

Whether you use videos from YouTube or from your library’s streaming video collection, videos are an excellent teaching tool to use with your students.

Several benefits of using videos in education:

  • Reduce cognitive load

    • effectively developed videos or animation can enhance comprehension and retention of information.

 

(Fenesi, B., 2011; Mayer, R. E., & Moreno, R., 2003; Berk, R. A., 2009)

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  • Support multimodal learning

    • videos are one way to integrate multi-modal elements (e.g. text, audio, images, animation) into your teaching. Multimodal learning has been found to “result in significant gains in basic and higher-order learning”.

 

(Metiri Group, 2008; Sankey, M., Birch, D. & Gardiner, M., 2010)

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              Presenting course materials in more than one mode may “lead learners to perceive that it is easier to learn and improve attention…in particular for lower-achieving students”.

 

(Sankey, M., Birch, D. & Gardiner, M., 2010)

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  • Appeal to multiple learning preferences and increase learner engagement

    • video can appeal to multiple preferences (e.g. visual, aural, written) through its use of images, animation, text, and audio.

 

(Berk, R. A., 2009; Sankey, M., Birch, D. & Gardiner, M., 2010; Kearney and Schuck, 2004; Reid, M., Burn, A. & Parker, D., 2002)

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  • Help students understand complex information

    • using text and pictures can assist students with difficult concepts

    • “Shah and Freedman (2003) discuss a number of benefits of using visualizations in learning environments, including:

      • promoting learning by providing an external representation of the information

      • deeper processing of information

      • maintaining learner attention by making the information more attractive and motivating, hence making complex information easier to comprehend”.

 

(cited in Sankey, M., Birch, D. & Gardiner, M., 2010)

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  • Authentic learning

    • using a video project with your students presents an opportunity for an authentic learning experience as described in this k-12 study, “authenticity was apparent through the ability of DV [digital video] to be used in real-world contexts; to develop life skills; to be produced for a real audience”.

 

(Kearney and Schuck, 2004)

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  • Develop digital literacies

    • digital skills are vital for our students, “As 90% of new jobs will require excellent digital skills, improving digital literacy (by which we mean those capabilities essential for living, learning and working in a digital society) is a key component for developing effective and employable learners”.

 

(JISC., 2013)

   

  Using videos both as teaching materials and as projects can help students develop various digital skills.

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  • Strengthen multiple core literacies

    • Using video in your teaching and/or as projects can help strengthen many of Multiple Core Literacies including, written and oral communication, information literacy, creative thinking, inquiry, and analysis, critical thinking and problem solving, digital literacy, etc.

But keep in mind…

“…the integration of DV [digital video] technologies into subject teaching does not automatically improve the quality of work or standards of attainment; high-quality teaching remains the key factor in raising achievement…”

 

(Reid, M., Burn, A. & Parker, D., 2002).

Reference: https://sites.google.com/view/creatingeducationalvideos/whyvideos?authuser=0

Reasons that instructors want to create videos:

  • Record a physics or chemistry demonstration with narration

  • Walk through a problem set for students to watch at any time

  • Use screen capture to walk students through the materials on the course website

  • Record a lecture with slides to introduce or review a topic

  • Record a “think aloud” presentation where students can hear the instructor apply different processes or steps that he/she is teaching

  • Demonstrate certain tools or machines that students need to learn how to operate

  • Leverage Case-Base Learning

  • Walk through an important relationship between concepts or a complex diagram

Purposes that instructors want to use existed videos:

  • Elaborate on a subject to spark student discussion

  • Prompt students to draw connections or compare topics

  • Teach complex relationships, systems, or phenomena that are better demonstrated through animations or models

  • Highlight cultural or historical artifacts, people, or concepts

Student-Generated Videos

Evidence suggests that many students view video creation as a valuable and engaging activity.

 

However, like all instructional assignments, students will vary in their perception and response to an assignment that involves video creation. For instance, some may find this a great way to demonstrate their knowledge while thinking creatively, while others may feel so intimidated by the idea of creating a video that they will not be able to convey their understanding effectively.

 

As the UDL principles suggest, consider using multimedia as an option for students to demonstrate knowledge, but offer other means as a way to avoid inadvertently privileging, excluding, or disengaging learners. When possible, teach principles of good video production, including how considerations of content and target audience shape the structure and delivery of the content in the video.

Video as an assignment, instructors may ask students to:

  • record a teach-back session where students are asked to explain concepts in their own words

  • conduct a video interview with someone in the field

  • record quick responses to open-ended questions with a tool like Vine

  • create a video blog entry

  • record an experiment and summarize findings

  • create a mini-documentary on a related subject

  • create a multimedia presentation and present it to the class

  • remix and adapt existing videos with the appropriate Creative Commons license to demonstrate the understanding

Optimizing Video for Learning

  • Allow students to have direct access to the video so that they can control playback features such as replay, fast-forward, playback speed, and pausing.

 

  • Choose or create videos that are relatively short in duration or are divided into chapters or sections.

 

  • Choose videos that are available with captions or that can be captioned by a provider. Captions are not only useful for those with auditory challenges, but can be useful for many learners, including those learning a new language, those accessing the video in a noisy environment, or those who prefer to read along as they listen.

 

  • To be fully accessible to the greatest range of uses, transcripts should also be provided along with captions. Transcripts provide a text-based version of the content including audio descriptions of visual information and audio content (e.g., laughter, music).

 

Screen reader users often prefer transcripts over listening to the audio content as it is a much faster way to access all of the information presented in the video.

 

  • A student-created video should also be accessible.

UDL & Videos:

Provide multiple means of engagement:

Both instructor use of video and student-generated video can recruit and sustain interest for a particular topic and lead to more meaningful participation in the classroom.

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Provide multiple means of action and expression:

Offer students the opportunity to create videos as an active way to demonstrate understanding, particularly for those who experience challenges in the area of writing or live presentation.

     

Provide multiple means of representation:

Both instructor use of video and student-generated video can recruit and sustain interest for a particular topic and lead to more meaningful participation in the classroom.

Resources for Using Video in the Classroom:

Make Instructional Videos More Effective 

Videos can be an effective tool in your teaching tool kit. When incorporating videos into a lesson, it’s important to keep in mind the three key components of cognitive load, elements that impact engagement, and elements that promote active learning.

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Luckily, consideration of these elements converges on a few recommendations:

 

Keep videos brief and targeted on learning goals.

Observation shows that median engagement time for videos less than 6 minutes long was close to 100%.

As video lengthened, however, student engagement dropped off.

In fact, the maximum median engagement time for a video of any length is 6 minutes. Making videos longer than 6-9 minutes is therefore likely to be wasted effort.

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Use both audio and visual channels 

Using both channels (visual/pictorial & audio/verbal) to convey appropriate and complementary information has been shown to increase students’ retention and ability to transfer information (Mayer and Moreno, 2003) and to increase student engagement with videos (Thomson et al., 2014; Guo et al., 2014).

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When telling a story, it can be very effective to show the storyteller’s face or to show an animation of the story.

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When solving a problem, Khan academy-style videos are particularly helpful, showing students step-by-step with narration how to work through the problem (Guo et al., 2014)

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When teaching about an invisible phenomenon, it can be helpful to provide an illustration.

 

In each case, providing visual elements that add to the lesson can not only promote student understanding but also engagement with the lesson.

 

Use signaling to highlight important ideas or concepts.

By highlighting the key information, it helps direct learner attention, thus targeting particular elements of the video for processing in the working memory.

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This can reduce extraneous load by helping novice learners with the task of determining which elements within a complex tool are important, and it can also increase germane load by emphasizing the organization of and connections within the information.

 

Use guiding questions.

 

Eliminate interesting but extraneous information from the video,

That is, information that does not contribute to the learning goal. Ibrahim (2012) has shown that this treatment can improve retention and transfer of new information from video.

 

Use a conversational, enthusiastic style to enhance engagement.

Student engagement is dependent on the narrator’s speaking rate, with student engagement increasing as speaking rate increased (2014).

 

Embed videos in a context of active learning 

The important thing to keep in mind is that watching a video can be a passive experience, much as reading can be.

To make the most of our educational videos, we need to help students do the processing and self-evaluation that will lead to the learning we want to see.

The particular way you do this should be guided by goals of the course and the norms of your discipline.

 

Students who were able to control movement through the video, selecting important sections to review and moving backwards when desired, demonstrated better achievement of learning outcomes and greater satisfaction.

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