"But I made them a video..." Helping Students Use Instructional Videos Effectively

Could you do it without going back and rewatching parts of the video? Maybe. I couldn’t. If you’re like me, after the first few steps, you had to go back and watch parts again to remember what came next or how to make a particular fold. Your executive functioning skills prompted you to return to the source of instruction when you weren’t clear on what to do next.

Right now, many of us are creating or sharing instructional videos for students to use on their remote days. Hopefully you’re considering these tips for making effective videos for learning, but even if you are, are your students viewing those videos effectively? How often do you interact with students who are struggling and they say, “But I watched the video….”

There’s a big difference between watching a video for entertainment and watching a video to learn content or a skill, but some of our students haven’t yet made that distinction. Students who struggle with executive functioning need help developing a clear strategy for how to make meaning from video. In addition, as we’ve learned from our integrated literacy work, informational text is not meant to be read just once. Video is a type of text and in order to make meaning of it, viewing needs to be an active process that involves multiple exposures to the information.

Content vs. Skills

How students approach an instructional video can depend on the purpose of the video itself. Videos like TED Talks or lectures are content-focused. These videos require learners to stop and make notes while they’re watching, either on paper or using digital tools such as Reclipped. (Learn more about Reclipped in this module.) This allows students to use the meaning-making strategies they’ve learned when reading paper-based texts and apply them to information they’re learning via video.

Videos that demonstrate skills might require a slightly different strategy. If your instructional video is demonstrating a process or skill - solving a math problem, labeling parts of a map, building a model, etc., students need to learn to start and stop and replay the video as they work through the process that’s being demonstrated, stopping to try each step as they watch. It’s the video version of “I do, you do”. When students stop and try a problem or a step in a procedure immediately after watching it modelled on a video, they can test it out and if it doesn’t work, go back and rewatch and try again, before moving on to the next step. This might be instinctive to most of us, but students who struggle with executive functioning will need explicit instruction in order to make this strategy part of their learning routine.

Explicitly Teach How to Learn from Videos

If you’re going to expend the effort to find or create instructional videos for students, it’s worth your time to explicitly teach them how to get the most out of those experiences. This opportunity to “learn how to learn” will pay off as students are better able to use those resources to learn independently on their remote days and beyond.

Consider how that origami video you watched earlier could turn into an explicit lesson on how to learn from videos.

Remind students that informational text needs to be “read” more than once. Show the video first, asking students to think about what the video creator’s purpose was in making this video. Getting them to focus on identifying the purpose of the video will be helpful in having them choose the best strategy for viewing.

After this first viewing, ask students what they think the video’s purpose is. You could do this through a Type 1 writing and then have students share their responses with a partner. In this case it’s pretty obvious that the purpose is to teach you how to fold a paper box. Discuss whether they feel like they could actually fold that box right now. Most will probably say they need to watch it again. If you have time you could show the video straight through a second time and ask if they think they’d be more successful now.

Give each student a square of paper and let them try to fold the box. Chances are good someone will ask to see the video - or at least a part of it - again.

Tell them this time as we watch, we’re going to start and stop so we can work along with the video.

Stop the video after each step is modeled and give students a chance to complete that step. If students have questions or need help, demonstrate sliding the playhead back a few seconds to rewind the video to the right spot without having to start over from the beginning.

When all students have successfully folded a box, stop and debrief. Discuss how we used the video to help us move through the process step-by-step. Ask if they’ve had similar experiences outside of school - perhaps learning a new recipe or watching a video to learn a new game.

Remind students that when teachers share instructional videos, they are not meant to be watched just once and then checked off a list. Students will have to identify the purpose of the video and interact with it as many times as they need to in order to meet that purpose.

Special thanks to Anne Reardon for creating this module, with inspiration and brainstorming help from Maggie Snelbaker, ELD Teacher at MMS.