1. Play/Pause and Rewind
This is the most straightforward way that videos can help students: even if you record a lecture exactly as you would deliver in class, and share the video with your students, this benefit still stands out. The ability to play/pause videos and rewatch sections can help students so much. Explanations can make more sense when watched a second time. Also, the video format accommodates differences in students’ writing/note-taking speed and processing speed.
2. Access to Subject-Matter Experts
For example, if you are teaching students about gravity and orbits, you could show your students an instructional video from an astrophysicist or aerospace engineer who might be more knowledgeable and/or excited about the specific topic than you. This can help students become more engaged and learn a topic more deeply than if you had taught it yourself.
3. Enhanced Delivery
A recorded lesson can include more carefully planned explanations & word choice. Many people who post educational videos on YouTube spend a long time planning, scripting, and editing their videos, producing a result that is carefully thought-through in its entirety. One excellent example of this is Grant Sanderson, who makes the 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel. On his channel, every video is, down to the second, carefully planned and scripted to carefully explain each math concept. Every detail is chosen specifically for the benefit of the learner and the learning process. The video format allows for much more careful choice of details than a live delivery of a lesson.
It’s important to note that learners can benefit from seeing a teacher’s thought process and ability to work through mistakes, so there is a place for unedited (or lightly edited) lesson videos as well. Videos with less editing and planning also take much less time to produce, which makes them a lot easier for teachers to make. A great example of this is Eddie Woo’s YouTube channel. Many of his videos are unedited recordings of his actual secondary math classes.
4. Enhanced Graphics & Illustrations
This is where the 3Blue1Brown channel really shines. Every video includes unique and mind-opening visualizations and animations that illustrate and explain a complex mathematical concept. These illustrations and animations are completely unlike anyone could draw on a whiteboard, and as a result, the perspectives and pedagogical approaches introduced in these videos are often entirely different from the typical ways of covering the content.
Even for normal people who don’t have Grant Sanderson’s amazing computer animation abilities, a video recording can help improve visualization abilities compared with a live lesson. Video recordings allow teachers to more seamlessly integrate visualization technology (like online graphing tools and other online resources) than live lessons.
5. Saving Teacher’s Time
Teachers can save time by finding a relevant and useful instructional video that is able to explain a complex topic concisely. A great example of this during my own education was my history and psychology teachers during high school using Crash Course videos to introduce new topics and to hit the main points. The teachers would then go into more detail on each of the main points in their own lessons. The videos provided a quick and engaging high-level overview of the topics while the teachers covered the specific details in live lessons.
6. Rewatching Outside of Class
If students forget specific details of what was covered in an instructional video, they can watch it outside of class to help them review! This can help students get unstuck on homework, or study for tests. Teachers could record their class sessions and share those with their students to rewatch, or they could link to video resources created externally, such as Khan Academy. Khan Academy provides excellent free online courses (with videos, articles, and exercises) that are closely aligned with US curriculum for most subjects, especially math and science.
7. Unique Formats and Time Tricks
The video format & the ability to edit allows teachers to create lessons in ways that are not possible with live lessons. For example, teachers can include music and effects into instructional videos that wouldn’t be feasible in a live lesson. They also can take advantage of the ability to edit, such as by cutting out redundant words, cutting out or speeding up the time it takes to write something on the board, or making recordings from different times and places.
8. Accessibility
Recorded videos can help learners who benefit from learning in a format different from what a teacher might deliver in a live lesson. For example, teachers might refer students to videos that teach material in the student’s native language. This can help students learn a subject if their first language is not the language used in class. Also, videos can include closed captioning, which can help students who struggle to understand what a teacher is saying, whether it be due to a hearing impairment, dialectical differences, or another reason. Most video-sharing websites allow creators to upload their own captions for videos. YouTube can also provide computer-generated captions, with limited accuracy, which may or may not be helpful depending on the situation. YouTube also has the ability to automatically translate captions between languages, so even if a video is not in a learner’s preferred language, auto-translated captions can help it become accessible to them.
I love it when people use that image...it was actually captured by a colleague of mine while working at the International School Bangkok. She uploaded it to Flickr in 2007ish and gave it a creative common license so others could use it. It has since been used more times then anyone knows and only because she gave it away for free and at this point nobody even knows she's the one that took it.
ReplyDeleteThe power of instructional videos is real.....I just with we'd lean into more instead of away from it after the pandemic.