Tips for Creating Videos

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Videos are a great way to deliver content, keep your students engaged, and be virtually present. Your virtual presence in an online class is just as important as your physical presence in a face-to-face course. Instructor presence is a key factor in student retention, engagement and success.

Keep It Short

Even when you’re teaching an in-person course that lasts 50 minutes, you aren’t lecturing the entire time. You may spend a significant portion of an in-person course making announcements, reviewing previous content, facilitating collaboration between students and answering questions. In some cases, your actual lectures may only be between 15-30 minutes. 50-minute in-person class times do not equate to 50 minutes of recorded lecture videos.

Try to keep your videos to no more than 5-8 minutes long. It’s fine if you need to have multiple lecture videos to cover the required information. Break up your content by topic and film a series of shorter videos. Shorter videos allow more flexibility for students and are easier to re-watch if they need to review material.

Show Your Personality

Many students enjoy getting to know their instructors, and we all generally enjoy courses where are instructors are authentic, energetic, engaging and even funny. If we want our students to be excited about the topics we are teaching, we need to show our passion for those topics. So show your personality and use humor when it’s appropriate!

You can also help students get to know you by creating a short bio video that includes things about your professional background, hobbies and interests. When students feel like they know you on a more personal level, they are usually more willing to invest in your course and seek you out when they need help.

Don’t Reproduce the Textbook

If you assign readings from a textbook or journal articles, let the texts speak for themselves. Rather than using lecture video time to restate everything in assigned readings, use your videos to enhance and expand the content. Pick out key passages to highlight by providing deeper context, explaining difficult topics or giving examples from your own career to deepen students’ understanding. Students are more likely to engage with material if they know that each medium (text and video) complement, rather than repeat each other.

Think About Accessibility

Canvas has auto-generated captions when you upload or record videos using Canvas Studio. However, poor video quality can hinder students from learning, even when using the most robust accessibility tools. Bright lighting, clear speech and quality audio are necessary to create high-quality accessible videos. Recording yourself lecturing during an in-person class and uploading it for reuse in an online class generally does not provide a quality learning experience for students. It is best to produce videos specifically for your online courses. Quality video production paired with accessibility features like captioning or transcript download will help ensure that your students can get the most from your lectures.

Switch Up the Visuals

There isn’t a right or wrong style for how your video is made. It is perfectly acceptable to use a PowerPoint slide with your face inset in front of it, but it will be more interesting if you switch presentation styles from time to time. You can switch from the inset screencast (sometimes referred to as a “floating head” video) to full-screen charts or graphs. You can record yourself demonstrating something like solving an equation by hand, as you might do on a whiteboard in a physical classroom.

The key is to make sure you’re using the presentation style that makes the most impact with the content. For example, if you are providing a professional anecdote, it might make the most sense to have just your face on camera. If you are explaining a series of criteria, you might show a bulleted list of the criteria and be a “floating head” in the corner of the screen describing the list. If you are talking about a geographic region or a set of statistics, it may be best to use full-page maps or charts and provide an audio voiceover.

To take it to the next step, consider how you might switch up a location entirely rather than just recording from your office. For example, could you film a lecture video in a laboratory setting on campus or could you film (with permission) inside an art exhibit? Many students love being taken on learning journeys like these! Things like this may not be possible for every lecture, but they are a great way to add variety and make the learning more tangible for them.

Incorporate Interaction

Online classes may not offer the same opportunity for you to interact with your students face-to-face as you may have during an in-person course, but you can still incorporate opportunities for students to interact. When planning videos for an online course, consider how you would question your students in a traditional class. Ask those same questions, then pause and allow a few seconds for them to think about their answer. You can even use the video quiz feature within Canvas to build these questions right into your video.

The best way to ensure students are watching your videos is to include new and original information in the video and insert that information on assessments or activities. If you just summarize information students can get from the internet or a textbook, they will be less likely to watch and engage with the video. You could provide fill-in-the-blank or a graphic organizer students can use to study along with the video. You can also create an activity or assignment for which students will not know the answers unless they watch the video. Students are more likely to watch the videos if it directly relates to their overall success in the course.