All posts by Jim Janossy

Good Vibes from Video

I just had an interesting experience related to a pure distance-learning class I am teaching. I’m relating this to broach a subject near and dear to my instructor heart. As I was getting the same old take-out sandwich at the same old Subway today, a student came up to me and said with a big smile that he was taking his first online course and that he liked it. It took a minute for things to register for me since I was right in the middle of figuring out if I wanted mustard or mayo or both . The student was talking about the course I am teaching! And it hit me that he recognized me from the short videos I make and post to establish a rapport with my students. What warmed the cockles of my heart was the fact that I was succeeding in my attempt to establish a connection with my distance-learning students with video.

I bring this up because it’s evident that far too many faculty have the idea that making a video is a Big Deal. Maybe it brings to mind that room with the green wall, big lights, microphones, and two or three technicians with huge cameras. Since it seems like such a special experience, it’s easy to put off trying video, figuring that you need to get set for your Big Experience on Camera. This is an incorrect notion, and it’s silly. It’s not silly because it might be a new experience for you. It’s silly because it’s a horribly out-of-date way to think about video, what it takes, and what its purpose is.

Making a video these days is not like it was just five years ago. Today it takes only a small digital camera like the one you probably already own switched to its “movie” mode. It doesn’t take special lighting, and it doesn’t even take a tripod if you just want to set the camera on a few books or duct tape it to the top of a wine bottle like I do. You start the camera, look into it, and talk. It’s even easier if you have a webcam with a built-in microphone on your desktop or built into your laptop (most laptops have them now). With this you can just log in to a hosting Web site like YouTube (accounts are free) and record right into the hoster’s Web site!

I use both of these techniques to make a forty-five-second or so “hi theres” to a class, a brief explanation of an important assignment, or even just an introduction at the start of a term. To make sure that everyone knows that it’s me talking to this specific class and that it’s not just the video equivalent of a form letter, I make sure I say something that clearly puts it into the timeframe of the course—such as the term, a recent class or news or sports event, or the weather.

When you stop the camera after making a “minute movie” like this, you have a choice. You can upload it as it is to a hosting service (I use and recommend YouTube), or you can do some editing on it using Windows Movie Maker (PCs) or iMovie (Macs) and then upload it. This lets you eliminate passages where you stumbled or wish you had said something differently. But don’t get hung up on the idea of editing your short video productions. Editing is not really all that necessary for these kinds of “here and now” short videos. That’s why I typically record directly into YouTube, and I don’t even plan on editing. Timing is of the essence here, not carefully planned, lengthy, and orchestrated content. Short is better. Less is more. It’s the you that video and voice convey that establishes and helps maintain a connection, not a talking-head lecture so long that it becomes tiresome.

Did you catch the notion here? This kind of connection-building video is not a major production. Its importance is in the moment, and its charm is its spontaneity. That’s what contributes to your distance-learning students seeing you as a human being rather than a name attached to e-mails. Try it. It’s easy, it’s free, and your learning-management system readily accepts its placement in a course for viewing by your students. Video delivers you in a way that people know you when they bump into you and feel connected enough to walk up and talk. Isn’t that what you were aiming for in class all along?

Podcasts, Predictions, and Pedagogical Productivity

The November/December, 2005, issue of Educause Review carried an article titled “There’s Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education” by Gardner Campbell. He predicted that podcasting would assume great prominence in higher education. Describing a scenario in which students subscribed to prelecture course materials, Campbell pictured these learners eagerly listening to warm-up materials as they skipped merrily to an in-person class session. Podcasting generated interest for a time and many faculty began to think about recording classes or talks and sought devices to accomplish this (we found that the Sansa Clip, at a six-hour recording capacity and a cost of under 25 dollars became a favored item). But by 2010, it doesn’t seem to be a prophecy fulfilled. As Bugs Bunny would chomp on a carrot and ask, “What’s up, doc?”

What’s up is that several factors shine the light of reality on a premise that seems to have been formed in the dark! Here’s why:

  • Faculty learned that there’s no free lunch in creating quality listenable audio. Just recording classroom audio isn’t enough. It takes time to edit out gaps, noises, and uninteresting segments. (If this weren’t the case, cassette recorders would have become a classroom staple beginning in the 1960s when they became commercially available.)
  • An audio recording device doesn’t necessarily pick up both student questions and answers—giving you the equivalent of the sound of one hand clapping.
  • It takes more work to copy audio from a sound recorder, transform it into mp3 format, and upload it to an accessible place than many people thought.
  • And maybe Campbell’s idea wasn’t very accurate in the first place!

To be sure, our iTunes University Web site has accumulated some types of course-supporting audio material. Available statistics show that the most listened-to recordings are those that either are required listening for some assignment or in some way support an assigned textbook—for example, an audio version of a textbook for use by students with reading difficulties. But we suspect that Campbell’s happy scenario has suffered from some of the realities of life. For one thing, anecdotal comments of students indicate that they regard iPods and their ilk primarily as entertainment devices, not learning tools. Then too, technology may have already passed plain audio by—sites like YouTube are much more interesting since they provide video as well as audio. In addition, the options for how students spend out-of-classroom time have greatly expanded with cell-phone texting and social networking sites, both of which now consume ever greater amounts of attention—and how many hours in the day does a person have anyway? And quite likely most important of all, technical or detailed lecture content that demands focus and concentration is just not the same as music when it comes to listening and doing something else. You can miss a few bars here or there in a tune and still catch the vibes. Miss a few phrases or sentences in a lecture on some complicated concept and you may pretty well be lost for all that follows.

What’s the point? The point for faculty interested in moving ahead with technology is that you need to choose your shots wisely. Don’t invest your precious time and energy based on assumptions about a technology that looks like it simply can’t miss. Get some help on your forays into teaching technologies from course designers who can help you benefit from what’s out there to enhance your pedagogy and make your class-prep and in-class time—and your student’s out-of-class time—as productive as possible. If your institution has the foresight to provide access to course designers who can help you, make use of their expertise and assistance. They’re not there to tell you what to teach or how to teach but to help you channel your efforts into techniques that are optimally productive for your specific requirements. And they might even show you some things that you didn’t even know existed!

To be honest Dr. Gardner, we felt your 2005 scenario rocked! But it’s 2010 and the world seems to be marching to the beat of a different drum.