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Tips on Successful Video Use in a Course
4 Tips on Successful Video Use in a Course*
Video use in education offers instructors countless new ways to access and present course material. They can provide students with different perspectives on the same topic and show students experiments that originally were not part of the class because they were too dangerous. Videos also offer the flexibility and adaptability to reach students at any moment. For example, students can review a video for an upcoming exam from wherever they are, or can access what they missed if they are unable to attend class. Instructors can access videos already made via curated course tools, from websites such as YouTube, or can create their own videos and record lectures if desired.
While video use in the classroom is fun and helpful, you need to plan what you want your students to get from the videos. Here are four tips to take into consideration when integrating video into your course.
1. Time / Brevity
Ideally, a video should be five to ten minutes long. If videos are longer than that, students may lose interest. The shorter the video, the better. If that’s not possible, and videos go past thirty minutes, segmenting the video to break up the content can make it easier for your students to stay engaged with the content.
2. Guided handouts
Guided handouts help pull out and prioritize specific material in the videos to help students focus on the most important content. These handouts can even help students score a higher grade on a later test.
Use guided handouts to:
- Ask specific questions about the video
- Define important terms
- Emphasize key points
Guided handouts can serve as valuable supplements that students can refer back to at any time to refresh their memory.
3. Quizzes
Like guided handouts, assigning quizzes after students have viewed a video helps them process what they just watched, and accentuates the key points in the video that directly relate to the course. That’s why selecting digital course tools that offer assignable video with built-in assessment is important. This ensures you get maximum impact from the videos you assign.
4. Lecture capture
When doing lecture captures, two key considerations to keep in mind are time and tone.
- Tone: The tone of the lecture should be conversational and informal.
- Time: Time considerations include both how long the video is and how much time is spent creating it. Some lecture videos can be used over and over again for semesters to come. In that case, spending a few hours on a video makes sense. However, creating a video that can only be used for one semester/class is usually not a time-effective decision.
Video use in the classroom helps to elevate the most important concepts in a course. It helps students relate to the content and see where it all fits in.
Published 12/07. © 2023 Sage Publishing. All rights reserved. All other brand and product names are the property of their respective owners.
*Sources:
Bevan, Max. “Why Videos Are Important in Education.” Next Thought Studios. February 01, 2017. https://www.nextthoughtstudios.com/video-production-blog/2017/1/31/why-v...
Brame, Cynthia J. “Effective Educational Videos: Principles and Guidelines for Maximizing Student Learning from Video Content.” CBE—Life Sciences Education15, no. 6 (2016): 1-6. doi:10.1187/cbe.16-03-0125.
Kaltura. State of Video in Education 2018: Insights and Trends. Report no. 5. Kaltura. 2018. https://corp.kaltura.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/The_State_of_Video_i...
Nanna, Shannon, Sean Tackett, and Shiv Gaglani. “Harnessing the power of patient videos to enhance social and behavioral sciences education.” Amee: MedEdPublish, no. 1 (2016). Doi: https://doi.org/10.15694/mep.2016.000161
NYU. “Best Practices for Video in Teaching and Learning.” New York University. March 08, 2014. https://www.nyu.edu/faculty/teaching-and-learning-resources/strategies-f...
Romaniuk, S. N. “Using Video in Higher Education.” eLearning Industry. April 23, 2018. https://elearningindustry.com/video-in-higher-education-using