Engagement
What can a textbook do that a teacher can’t do?
A book is always ready
A book allows you to go at your own pace
A book can follow you morning, noon and night, but...
A teacher is more animated, more entertaining, more engaging
A teacher can talk to you and help guide a student's understanding by elaborating, providing examples or modeling
A teacher can impart knowledge and build knowledge alongside you, but...
A teacher can’t be with you at all hours, anyplace, anytime!
While there is a time and place for both book and teacher, we think of videos as a bringing the best of both worlds to students
A video can be viewed just about anyplace, anytime
A video can be viewed over and over again until you understand what is being conveyed, and...
A well-produced video can be just as entertaining and engaging as a "live" teacher.
This section will present a series of videos that highlight both good and bad ways to create videos.
3 Videos
Which of the following videos do you find most engaging?
Each video shown above profiles a GMU professor. In some, you'll see that the content is engaging, but perhaps the speaker is not as dynamic. In another, we see a professor who gets into character to bring the video to life, but that over-dramatization may not suit everyone.
The goal should be to find balance between engaging content and letting your own style or personality shine through.
What NOT to do!
This video provides some good examples of bad video!
Best Practices
- Keep videos relatively short - around 6 minutes
- Speak (look) into the camera and keep it at eye level (suggesting you're making eye contact)
- Make sure the setting (background) suits the video
- Lighting is important
- Alternate scenes if you can (use other graphics or videos to make a point, or draw on a whiteboard)
- Speak slightly faster than you normally do
- Let your own personality shine through - add humor!
- Add interaction when appropriate (see Resources for a list of tools and apps)
Check out these tips for making a good video:
Cellphone-Produced Videos...
...A few Tips
- Film holding phone horizontally
- Use a camera stand or some kind of prop (hand-held leads to shaky videos)
- Apply all the same Best Practice Tips stated above!
Tools for making videos interactive
You can add interactive elements to your video using a few online tools. This is a great way to keep your students engaged. Here are a few online tools we recommend for adding interactivity:
Free, video interaction tool, enables video and audio creation and interaction tools such as multiple-choice questions, true/false, short answer, analytics, for both PC and Mac
Free add-on for PowerPoint, enables video and audio creation, and interaction such as polling, analytics, for PC only
Free, video interaction tool, enables video and audio creation and interaction tools such as multiple-choice questions, true/false, short answer, analytics, for both PC and Mac (here's a demo)
Free, video creation and interaction tool, enables limited interactive activities for non-commercial videos (End Screens and Cards), for both PC and Mac
Your Turn to Practice
Now it is time to try your hand!
Create a webcam/cellphone video using the best practices (upload to YouTube)
-- OR --
Create an interactive video using PlayPosit (see directions below):
Here's a demo
Try out PlayPosit!
First, you'll need to sign up for a free account
Next, get started by creating your first interactive video piece. Below are the step-by-step instructions:
1. Upload to YouTube and use your own webcam or cellphone produced video -- OR -- find a YouTube video you want to use for the lesson and copy the URL
2. Select "Design a Bulb"
3. Paste the URL of the video and then hover over the orange 'action' button in the center of the video timeline. and choose 'add question'
4. Select the question type you would like to insert
Reflect
After you've had some time to play around and test out the tool, share a few ideas of how you might use the tool in your classes: Padlet: Video
(Click on the + button on the bottom right corner to add your content)
More tools
Access more tools for video production from the Resources page