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Day 5: Integrating video into your teaching

Video in Teaching and Learning- Part 2

Written by Rebecca Ng and Janene Harman, ANU Online

Welcome to Day 10, Integrating video into your teaching. We know that video can be a great teaching tool but you can maximise its effectiveness by using it in conjunction with other learning activities such as quizzes and forums. In doing this, students will be more directed and focused when watching the video as they are required to actively engage with its content. If you plan your video not just as a standalone item but as part of a group of activities, it will help you design a more integrated course.

Storyboarding activities and videos needs to be part of your planning process. Think about the learning outcomes you want to achieve: What is it you want students to know from the content you are delivering in a video? You can find some of these guidelines in one of our previous coffee courses: Enhancing your lectures

How to get students to watch your video?

Image source: Pixabay.com retrieved 1/9/17

One of the big issues with video is that you can spend time creating and putting together something great that delivers the content but it doesn’t necessarily translate to viewership. Results from various research have been inconclusive as to whether videos and lecture captures enhance teaching and learning or are even watched by students (See Part 1; O’Callaghan et al., 2015; Woolfitt, 2015; McKee, 2014). Some well-received courses only showed students watching an average of five hours of lecture capture per term – indicating that students picked and chose sections to view rather than watching these videos in their entirety (Grumett & Appleby-Donald, 2016). So how can you stimulate students to watch your video?

Some useful tips are:

  • Keep your video short (6 minutes or under) and focus on key points. Break information down into small, bite-sized pieces – better to have a number of short, chunked videos rather than one long video!
  • Conduct a short quiz after the video
  • Ask questions in the video and direct students to discuss them in a forum
  • Set short tasks or activities within the video for students to do – e.g. collect articles on a topic and share them with the class, tell them to pause the video and post their ideas a forum, do a poll or quiz, etc.

Other strategies for overcoming this problem can be found in part 1 of this coffee course.

Embedding video into learning and learning designs

Many of you use your local learning management system (LMS) – e.g. ANU uses Moodle – to house your lecture content. Often this is in the form of PowerPoint presentations, lecture material, lecture recordings, quizzes, forums and so on.

You may, however, choose to embed your videos directly into forums, quizzes or other online presentation tools. In this example, I’ve used Sway, an Office365 tool, to embed a video followed by a quiz (using Polleverywhere). Please note that the content within this video is not relevant to this course.

Here are some examples where videos have been embedded with various activities:

In this case, I’ve embedded a twitter feed with a dedicated hashtag related to the video:

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) often have lessons that are taught using videos followed by online discussions and quizzes. Here’s an example:

This article has a number of different ideas to help move beyond passive viewership such as setting up accompanying chatrooms alongside videos, running virtual classrooms, etc.: How to move beyond lecture capture: pedagogy guide

Other tools and techniques:

There are a few other tools that you can use to integrate your video with activities.

Verse/Kaltura/Articulate – Some video players and software (most require a subscription though) have in-built interactive elements such as quizzes or menus and can usually be embedded into your LMS site (e.g. See the University of Queensland Kaltura guide). Here is an example of to make an interactive video with quiz in Kaltura.

Echo360 Active Learning Platform (ALP) – Many universities in Australia, including ANU, have subscribed to Echo360 ALP. At the ANU, it is scheduled to be released at end of this year and will be used campus wide from the start of 2018. While ALP will continue to carry the traditional Echo360 lecture capture function, it will house a suite of interactive features that can be integrated such as quizzes and interactive slides.

Powtoons/Biteable – Both Biteable and Powtoons allow users to create animation and cartoon videos. This can be used to break up the monotony of lectures.

Final word:

While the task of integrating videos into a course may require more work and planning than you initially thought, the results of good integration may also enhance teaching and learning experiences and create long term efficiencies.

Here’s a great article that sums up today’s coffee course: What Makes an Online Instructional Video Compelling?

Activity:

Reflect on best practices discussed with using videos as part of teaching. Considering the course and students you teach, do you think these best practices are relevant? Why/Why not? How have/would you integrate videos with activities?

Join us for a face-to-face session today!

Please register if you would like to come.

Friday, 8 September, 12-1pm, Chancelry Building #10, 10 East Road – meet in the Lobby

We invite you to a hands-on session where you can learn more about and practise presenting on camera in the SCAPA Professional Media Studio.  Jamie Kidston from SCAPA will also be on hand to share his tips. Please RSVP to: Karlene.dickens@anu.edu.au if you are able to attend. View the campus map for directions.

Additional resources:

References:

Grumett, D. & Appleby-Donald, E. (2016). Does lecture capture enhance learning?, Teaching Matters at the University of Edinburgh, retrieved on 30 August 2017 from http://www.teaching-matters-blog.ed.ac.uk/?p=526

McKee, D. (2014). What happens when students can choose between videos and in-person lectures, Teach Better, retrieved on 30 August 2017 from http://teachbetter.co/blog/2014/11/24/video-vs-in-person-lectures/

O’Callaghanm F.V., Neumann, D.L., Jones, L. & Creed, P.A. (2017). The use of lecture recordings in higher education: A review of institutional, student, and lecturer issues, Education and Information Technologies, 22(1), pp. 399-415.

Woolfitt (2015). The effective use of video in higher education, Lectoraat Teaching, retrieved on 30 August 2017 from https://www.inholland.nl/media/10230/the-effective-use-of-video-in-higher-education-woolfitt-october-2015.pdf

 

 

 

9 thoughts on “Day 5: Integrating video into your teaching

  1. Reflect on best practices discussed with using videos as part of teaching. Considering the course and students you teach, do you think these best practices are relevant? Why/Why not? How have/would you integrate videos with activities?

    I am going to follow the 5 minute rule going forward — focusing on two goals – 1 headshot videos for personal engagement as weekly intro and/or sumary. 2. worked examples – with handwriting and occasional inserted images of the formula or algorithm being followed. I am not sure what to do about the traditional pre-exam course summary lecture though — definitely not a 5minutes thing.

    See you at the SCAPA tour

    1. Thank you for your comment. It’s great you are going with the 5 minute rule. In terms of traditional pre-exam course summary lecture, you may want to consider chunking the information by grouping points and presenting them in a series of short videos. I recently heard someone tell me how useful these may be for some students as they need more revision in certain areas rather than others. But it’ll be interesting to hear what feedback you or others may have had about these pre-exam summary videos! Thank you and see you soon – Rebecca

  2. I can see the value of a short video. When I log into echo360 and watch patterns in viewing, I can see that most students watch the first 5 minutes as a block, and then start skipping ahead… and a quiz would make sure that, if they had skipped over something important, they’d have to go back and find it.
    I really like the idea of a forum too. We’ve started dedicating one class a week to a forum discussion on Wattle. I post questions and students answer them online and we spend about an hour doing that. I can see that would be even more engaging with some video content added as well.
    Thanks again for all the great ideas and another awesome coffee course!

  3. Keeping the videos short (6 minutes) and having a quiz after are very relevant to any students. While I like to think that my students are self directed mature learners, it helps to tell them “there will be a TEST after this, so pay attention!”. However, I would like to have more than just a video in a package of work, perhaps some reading to do as well and discuss in a forum.

    But video is no different to any other form of material provided for study: I would not give a student anything to read or do, unless there was some form of assessment associated, which counted to their final result. Otherwise I am saying to the student: “This is not important, so skip it”.

  4. Yes, keeping the video brief – 4 to 5 mins max – will be what I aim for, too. Some of the notions/theories related to my research/teaching are very complex but, once explained and related to real-world experiences, easily understood. Going any longer than 4 to 5 mins could be counterproductice and lose my viewer.
    I’m looking forward to becoming proficient at editing my videos – I can see that the possibilities are endless! I will then focus on integrating headshots to introduce/explain certain notions and support that with written material/images to optimise learning outcomes.
    Quizes and forums are a great way to engage the different types of learners too [though I must confess, I tend to skip them when I do MOOCs!]; forums, in particular, I find really effective when wanting to promote reflective learning.

    So thanks all for another interesting week – it has been very thought provoking with a lot to reflect on.
    Cheers all,
    Catherine

  5. Reflect on best practices discussed with using videos as part of teaching. Considering the course and students you teach, do you think these best practices are relevant? Why/Why not? How have/would you integrate videos with activities?
    As most of the others have said, brief videos seem very sensible. I also like the idea of having little quizzes embedded in the video, or at the end. While I like the idea of forums, when I’ve had to contribute to them in the past (as a student), I’ve found myself just looking to get the comment out of the way rather than seeing it as an opportunity to learn from the other students. I’m not sure if there are good ways around this, or maybe it’s not a general problem in any case?!

  6. Reflect on best practices discussed with using videos as part of teaching. Considering the course and students you teach, do you think these best practices are relevant? Why/Why not? How have/would you integrate videos with activities?
    Yes, I think all these practices are relevant. Integration of quizzes for learning with video content and using tools such as Kaltura is a bit of a game changer for me. The resource our team have created has quizzes embedded but not integrated with the videos (in a tech sense) or particularly well content wise. Coming back to the idea of planning videos not just as standalone items but as part of a group of activities, will help design a more integrated course – yes.
    In my case with our resource, I now see two the reasons for the lack of integration of the video content with the activities and quizzes. Firstly, a lack of storyboarding in the planning phase, and two, having no control over the video content (provided by others with minimal to no input from the development team). In some ways this is a bit chicken and egg because without know what our presenters would talk about, I couldn’t storyboard the rest of the content.
    So, my challenge is to go view our course as a whole, and tighten up the integration. I would ideally like to try one video with Kaltura to see how this works.
    Thanks Coffee team – so valuable as always!

  7. Reflect on best practices discussed with using videos as part of teaching. Considering the course and students you teach, do you think these best practices are relevant? Why/Why not? How have/would you integrate videos with activities?

    Great course – it has opened my mind to a few things I am currently involved in and how video could be integrated:
    1. I have currently been involved in reviewing IT modules within ANU Pulse which are long videos to learn software in lieu of face to face training. As I login to watch the interactive screen on a drilled down subject-topic the screen tab indicates 1 of 60 – ug! is my first reaction now that people are using more short videos something like this looks overwhelming. I realise it is required to learn the techniques but will people continue to use this method?
    2. Even when I teach I recommend participants go to YouTube and search for “Word version xxx Merging Table cells” instead of reading through Word help text – watch a short video on YouTube.
    3. When I finish my workshop on maintaining consistency in your thesis workshop I email students a Revision Email to revisit the concepts taught in the workshop and step by step instructions for participants to ensure they are able to save and use templates properly by practicing changing fonts types or sizes based on their requirements for their documents. This could be made into a video and I could follow the planning concepts discussed over the past 10 days: “Set Learning Outcomes” and “Storyboard” the steps in the recording – as I mentioned yesterday I would not have the video focus on me – it could be over the shoulder of a student or simply screen shots of Word using Camtasia software with my voiceover.
    4. Lastly, ILP plan to reuse or alter some of the Research Ready 5 session teaching viewed at Research Ready ANU pages We could incorporate new videos that imbed quizzes.

  8. I notice above in the Mgt example that you included separate activities for each. I like the idea that the video is not a stand alone activity but integrated within other activities – readings, quizzes, forums and the like. I am thinking that perhaps a lesson may also work for this, but if you know of any other Wattle activities that may result in a better outcome please let me know. I believe that a SCORM package may be more complicated. Thank you for all the valuable tips! Much appreciated!

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