How to Create an Effective Lesson Using Video

Over 65% of students are visual or tactile learners. Even those who are not categorized as visual learners in the educational sense are visual learners in a very fundamental way. After all, the human brain is primarily a processor for images.

So choosing the appropriate instructional strategy and combining it with an effective media format is part of the analysis carried out during your course design process.

Visual Aids in Enhancing the Learning Process

And there’s a significant body of research supporting that utilizing visual stimuli is more effective. When accompanied by visual cues, information gets far easier to remember and retrieve. And there are a wide variety of different types of visual tools including illustrations, pictures, videos, concept maps, graphs, and charts.

The use of video in class is different from other visual tools. The visual and auditory nature of videos appeals to a wide range of audiences and enables each one to process information in a way that’s natural to them. And with effectively designed videos, you can grab students’ attention, show authentic examples, and help them process abstract topics more easily.

How to Utilize Videos in Your Class

1. Identify the level of your students.

Evaluate the level of the vast majority in your class according to elementary, intermediate, and advanced, assess their strong and weak points, and find out their interests/learning requests. This could be done by your long-term observation or a quiz before the lesson.

2. Determine your essential questions and learning goals.

Like general lesson plans, essential questions and objectives that connect to them are indispensable. They will help you determine what to show and how to frame it for your class. Otherwise, the video or other visual materials would become just entertainment.

3. Prepare materials required.

Instructions videos are readily available on the internet, such as TeacherTube, YouTube, and BrainPop. If you want to spark students’ interest in your topic better, making an original video absolutely is a better option.

Materials depend on the form of your video – a screencast, a video presentation, or an original video edited by yourself. But generally, you need a full plan, video scripts, pictures, statistics, voiceover recordings, source videos, and proper setup in your classroom.

4. Create proper video content.

What we discussed above is about pre-production, then we come to post-production, the crucial step to tailor the video for your specific teaching needs. Keep in your mind that shorter videos in more engaging. The maximum length of a video in class is 3 minutes. Meanwhile, you need obvious visual or auditory cues in your video to make students aware of the purposes.

Some schools have a series of videos from classes with the help of post-production companies. But you can try to make video presentations on your own with PowerPoint or edit some videos for your class with free video editing software to cut and merge video clips, add narrations, insert texts and effects, and so forth.

Reflection and Assessment

How can we make sure students actively watch? Release a mission before playing the video. For example, “As you watch, pay attention to....” Setting a goal for what they are going to watch will keep them accountable and attentive. On the other hand, you can let students raise questions about the video content and spark their interests. 

Besides, pausing every few minutes allows students to process what they’re viewing, which is especially valuable if it’s an information-packed video, or if you are teaching an elementary grade.

After the reflection, introduce learning activities to students, such as discussion and group work. And the assessment can be done right after the video or when the whole lesson is over.

Conclusion

A productive lesson is not one in which information is overloaded. Most teachers probably understand the importance of the diversity of teaching materials but put it into practice differently. A well-balanced lesson spreads things out across different styles and proceeds at a proper pace to help students soak up information effectively.