Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Effective Educational Videos - Coggle Diagram
Effective Educational Videos
Educational videos have become an important part of higher education, providing an important content-delivery tool in many flipped, blended, and online classes.
Consideration of three elements for video design and
implementation can help instructors maximize video’s utility in the biology classroom:
• Cognitive load
• Student engagement
• Active learning
COGNITIVE LOAD
that memory has several components. Sensory memory is transient, collecting information from the environment. Information from sensory memory
may be selected for temporary storage and processing in working memory, which has very limited capacity. This processing is a prerequisite for encoding into long-term memory, which has virtually unlimitedcapacity.
Based on this model of memory, cognitive load theory suggests that any learning experience has three components. The first of these is intrinsic load, which is inherent to the subject under study and is determined in part by the degrees of connectivity within the subject.
The benefits of signaling are complemented by segmenting,
or the chunking of information in a video lesson. Segmenting
allows learners to engage with small pieces of new information
and gives them control over the flow of new information. As
such, it manages intrinsic load and can also increase germane
load by emphasizing the structure of the information.
The utility of video lessons can be maximized by
matching modality to content. By using both the audio/verbal
channel and the visual/pictorial channel to convey new information, and by fitting the particular type of information to the
most appropriate channel, instructors can enhance the germane
cognitive load of a learning experience.
STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
Another lens through which to consider educational video is student engagement. The idea is simple: if students do not watch videos, they cannot learn from them. Lessons on promoting student engagement derive from earlier research on multimedia instruction and more recent work on videos.
The first and most important guideline for maximizing student attention to educational video is to keep it short.
Another method to keep students engaged is to use a conversational style. Called the personalization principle by Mayer, the
use of conversational rather than formal language during multimedia instruction has been shown to have a large effect on
students’ learning, perhaps because a conversational style
encourages students to develop a sense of social partnership
with the narrator that leads to greater engagement and effort
Instructors can also promote student engagement with educational videos by creating or packaging them in a way that
conveys that the material is for these students in this class.
ACTIVE LEARNING
we have abundant evidence that active
learning in the classroom provides clear advantages over passive encounters with course material through lecture.
Schacter and Szpunar (2015) propose a conceptual framework for enhancing learning from educational videos that identifies online learning as a type of self-regulated learning.
Self-regulation of learning requires students to monitor their
own learning, to identify learning difficulties, and to respond to
these judgments.
Package Video with Interactive Questions
Compared the test performance of students who answered questions interpolated between 5 min video lectures and students who did unrelated arithmetic problems between
the videos, finding that the students in the interpolated question group performed significantly better on subsequent tests of
the material and reported less mind wandering.
Use Interactive Features That Give Students Control
Students who were able to
control movement through the video, selecting important sections to review and moving backward when desired, demonstrated better achievement of learning outcomes and greater
satisfaction.
Use Guiding Questions
. The students who answered the guiding questions while watching the video scored significantly higher on a later test.
Guiding questions may serve as an implicit means to share learning objectives with students, thus increasing the germane
load of the learning task and reducing the extraneous load by focusing student attention on important elements-
Make Video Part of a Larger Homework Assignment
One observation from their analysis of
Khan Academy videos was that videos that offered the greatest
benefits to students were highly relevant to associated exercises.
SUMMARY
Video may provide a significant means to improve student learning and enhance student engagement in biology courses. To maximize the benefit from educational videos, however, it is important to keep in mind the three key components of cognitive load, elements that impact engagement, and elements that
promote active learning. Luckily, consideration of these elements converges on a few recommendations
• Keep videos brief and targeted on learning goals.
• Use audio and visual elements to convey appropriate parts
of an explanation; consider how to make these elements
complementary rather than redundant.
• Use signaling to highlight important ideas or concepts.
• Use a conversational, enthusiastic style to enhance engagement.
• Embed videos in a context of active learning by using guiding questions, interactive elements, or associated homework
assignments.