The Story Behind

The Open Educator

One of my students with learning disability expressed concerns about following the class lectures with the other students. I kept thinking! I offered the student an option for some how-to videos. Then I started to produce some trial videos for him. The quality of those videos, including, voice, noise, organization, etc. was observed to be really poor! However, the student loved the videos and mentioned that they helped him to learn the materials. He requested me to produce more and made them available to the entire class. Then I made the videos available to the entire class of 50 students, with a disclaimer of the poor quality of the videos (and they are redundant). I was even worried about wasting my students’ time for making them watch the video demonstrations. End of the semester survey showed something surprising. Videos are rated the #1 activity among all the activities, including lectures, in-class problem solving, discussion, Q&A, etc., performed in the class. When the students were asked about the video quality, the most common response was observed to be - “Once you enter the content; you really don’t notice some quality issues with the videos that the instructor mentioned. It’s all about understanding the content!” Then, I thought "why not posting them in YouTube for the learners all over the world?" Videos are not monetized to minimize the distractions from the advertisements! Some of those first few videos are rated top in the YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/theopeneducator .

Lesson Learned!

• We are all challenged when we try to learn something new. If it’s not challenging, probably, it’s not so rewarding to learn! Building muscle or brain only works when they are challenged! Similar to the physical strength/endurance cross training such as cycling to recover from running or vice versa, our brain may develop better with such opportunities if challenged optimally!

• Do more people read a recipe book or watch a how-to video in cooking new dishes? Whether you prefer following a recipe book or a how-to video, it is always better to have options. When information is presented in many forms, there is a higher probability of getting it more to its intended meaning. Moreover, watching a video might engage many people more than just reading a text. The interactive nature of the video may activate multiple areas of the brain to process enough information, resulting in significantly more learning.

I have created “The Open Educator” to facilitate teaching and learning anytime, anywhere for anyone, including students, educators, and professionals in the world for free of cost. I have produced over 500 video demonstrations for each difficult to learn topic/subject I teach here at MSU. And I am constantly adding videos in my library. All videos are organized on the following two sites.

www.TheOpenEducator.com

www.YouTube.com/TheOpenEducator

YouTube Channel Statistics can be found at the following site

https://socialblade.com/youtube/c/theopeneducator