Category: video

445. Emotional Prosody and Online Learning

Posted in audio, evidence-based practices, flipped class, higher education, learning, video
May 13, 2026

The use of instructor-narrated video slideshows has increased in response to both the growth of online instruction and increased use of flipped classroom teaching approaches. In this episode, Corinne Syrnyk and Alyson Kubat join us to discuss their study examining the impact on student learning of audio vs video narration and of the emotional tone conveyed by the instructor’s voice.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: The use of instructor-narrated video slideshows has increased in response to both the growth of online instruction and increased use of flipped classroom teaching approaches. In this episode, we explore the impact on student learning of audio vs video narration and of the emotional tone conveyed by the instructor’s voice.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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John: Our guests today are Corinne Syrnyk and Alyson Kubat. Corinne is the chair of the psychology department and director of research at St. Mary’s University in Calgary, Alberta. She is a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on social, emotional and mental health issues in children, language development, and human-animal activities. Corinne recently established the wellness opportunities and outcomes for pets and humans lab at St. Mary’s. Alyson graduated from St Mary’s last year with a BA honors degree in psychology. Kristin Croyle, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Sciences, and Engineering here at SUNY Oswego, and a frequent guest on the podcast, will be filling in for Rebecca today, who has been called away for some other tasks by other administrators. Welcome Corinne and Alyson.

Alyson: Thank you.

Corinne: Hi. Thank you. Nice to be here. Thank you so much for having us. It’s very exciting.

John: Thank you for joining us.

Kristin: Welcome and today’s teas are… We always start by asking what our guests are drinking today. So are you drinking any tea today?

Corinne: I am not, but I think I will give you the stereotypical Canadian response and say that I started off with the Tim’s, which maybe is too idiosyncratic for your audience, but I went to Tim Horton’s and I got a coffee. But in terms of my preferred tea, that would be fennel.

Kristin: Ooh, nice. And Alyson?

Alyson: I have an Earl Grey.

Kristin: Ah, lovely. And today I’m doing iced tea straight up Lipton with raspberry, since we’re filming after lunch.

John: And I have an Irish Breakfast tea today. We’ve invited you here today to discuss an article that you had published in the November-December issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology entitled “The impact of emotional prosody on online learning in undergraduates.” To help frame this discussion, could you first explain what is meant by emotional prosody?

Corinne: So I think to kind of give you some context for emotional prosody, I’ll start by telling you a story about what we call prosodic speech, otherwise known as “Motherese.” That is essentially the way that we speak to infants. So, when you have a newborn baby, what you’ll tend to find is that the vast majority of parents, new parents, will speak to their kid in a very kind of exaggerated way. So, you have this newborn baby, and you don’t speak to them in a flat affect. You speak to them in an enthusiastic, lilted kind of affect where there’s lots of very clear starts and stops. So you might speak to a baby like, “You are so cute!” You’re relaying a lot of not just words they don’t understand, but the important thing that you’re relating there is potentially emotion and connection, because you’re having that kind of very positive emotional communication with the lilt of your speech, with the tone and the expression. So you fast forward away from prosodic speech to emotional prosody, essentially, that’s kind of the way that we speak, like I’m speaking right now. It has a cadence to it. There is a change in pitch and tone. Hopefully, you can kind of discern my motivation or enthusiasm for the topic by the emotion that I’m conveying through my speech. That is what we would call emotional prosody, and certainly a positive emotional prosody, as opposed to more neutral emotional prosody, which would be a lot more kind of like a flat affect. So if I was talking to you in a monotone way like this, which is a way that you would hopefully not speak to a person all the time, it’s that difference in communication that you’re receiving in terms of the emotional context that’s being communicated. Alyson, maybe you want to build on that?

Alyson: Yeah, I think it’s mainly just focusing on those acoustic cues that accompany speech. So a lot of tone, pitch, loudness of the voice, so all that kind of variance that accompanies speech and can draw interest in people who are listening to the person speak, and just kind of how that engages with the person that you’re speaking to.

Kristin: And what prompted your interest in applying emotional prosody to the online learning environment?

Corinne: Well, I think I’ll just clarify that Alyson was my honors student last year, and she did a really wonderful project. She got into her Honors Program, a competitive program, and I’m very picky [LAUGHTER] with my honors students, and I was very happy to work with her and right off the bat, Alyson communicated to me her interest in this topic, and she’ll tell you more about her own kind of personal ambitions and how this has informed her desire to work with me as a developmental psychologist. So Alyson, tell them your little story.

Alyson: Yeah, of course. I have a very personal interest in speech. I think it’s so interesting. I love learning about language development. I took a class during the… I believe it was the third year of my undergrad… focusing on language development, and the instructor was a speech pathologist. And I absolutely loved that class. It was so interesting to me. And when I went into honors, I just really wanted to focus on that interest in speech and language development. And I also am wanting to be a speech pathologist, hopefully. So I felt that that would be a good topic to focus on. I also, just through my learning, I found that most of my education was done through online environments, I suppose. I graduated high school in 2021, so it was during the height of COVID. So I found it really interesting just how quickly everything just turned into online learning just within the span of about a couple of weeks, maybe two weeks. And so I just found that so interesting, just based on the fact that there was quite a lack of understanding just about the foundations of online learning, about how it will impact learning in students, regardless of age. And I just wanted to kind of expand on that, just to be able to study speech in terms of online learning as well.

Kristin: Thank you.

John: And you began the discussion with the summary of some of the earlier research to set the stage for what the gaps are that your research fills in. Could you give us a bit of an overview of what studies have found before about emotional context and prosody in learning?

Alyson: So I think mainly previous research has focused on, as Dr. Syrnyk mentioned before, infant- directed speech, and just how crucial it is to the development of language in children, and just using that exaggerated speech, I find that’s where most of the previous research was kind of rooted in, considering prosody. And just prosody really aids cognitive processes such as attention, recall, and also promoting concentration. So most of that previous research just demonstrated that it possibly has implications for learning. So a study that I found really interesting when I was looking at previous research on this topic was a study conducted in 2022 by Dylman and Champoux-Larsson. They specifically focused on the impact of emotional prosody on the listening comprehension in, I believe it was 11- to 13-year old children. They found directly that positive emotional prosody promoted greater listening comprehension than when spoken to through neutral emotional prosody. I found there that there was just a very apparent lack of research on older students considering online communication. Yeah, so just the importance of emotions as well while communicating. Something that I found really interesting was considering academic emotions as well, and just how learners understand emotions in regards to their learning. A lot of the time, students felt that the emotions that they were experiencing while they were learning directly impacted their learning performance, as well as their social presence in online learning environments as well. They found, that in regards to social presence, when students perceived that there was a greater social presence in terms of online learning, that students felt that they would learn better, but they didn’t necessarily learn better. So I found all that to be quite interesting in terms of just building up the research for this study.

Kristin: Can you expand just a little bit? What do you mean by social presence?

Alyson: Oh, yeah. So in online learning environments, there was kind of an understanding that the facial cues and then the visual cues provided in online learning, where students were able to see the instructor, that would promote greater communication, and they would feel more connected with their instructor. But that definitely was not the case a lot of the times. So students felt that they were able to connect better with the content that was being spoken to them when they’re able to see a visual of the person speaking to them, but a lot of the times that actually interfered with their learning just based on the stimuli that was interfering with that.

Kristin: Mmhmm, kind of the number of things that they had to pay attention to.

Alyson: Yeah, it definitely impaired more than helped, even though a lot of students personally felt that that increased social presence would benefit, whereas it actually interfered with their learning quite a bit.

Corinne: Yeah, so like the social presence, this notion that somehow the instructor being visible is helpful is just kind of a wide held assumption. It really hasn’t been tested very much, which is part of the reason why Alyson wants to look into this as part of her research here. But there is a lot of mixed evidence in terms of the limited studies that exist in this field of interests. There is mixed evidence as to the efficacy of social presence. We don’t really have a hard yes or no as to whether it’s more beneficial or not, particularly when it’s combined with emotional prosody. So one of the kind of really neat things about her study is that she of course, got to kind of collapse these variables together by seeing what the impact of emotional prosody, whether positive or neutral, would be in impacting recall in terms of student performance, when you look at whether that social presence is activated or not. I also just want to take the opportunity to expand a little bit more on that Dylman, Champoux-Larsson 2002 study. That was Alyson’s kind of guiding light in terms of setting the foundation for her research. She came to me with that study very early and said, “I want to do something with this,” [LAUGHTER] and we really worked from that study quite a bit. Just to kind of build on that a little bit more. It’s really interesting that there’s a very limited scope of research when it comes to emotional prosody, and Dylman, Champoux-Larsson’s study is the one to go to. And what they found in that study was that they looked at younger kids, a group of 8- to 10-year olds versus slightly older, and the older were 11- to 13-years old, and what they did is they essentially tested them on five open-ended questions that were related to their content learning in their classes, which was grade appropriate. And from that, what they effectively found is that emotional prosody was important for the older kids, the 11-to 13-year olds, but not so important for the younger kids. When you think about the developmental profile of coming from a place of prosodic speech being important to kind of maybe having a little bit of a U-shape across middle childhood into later childhood.

John: I think the study is especially interesting given how much more important online learning has become, as well as even in classroom learning, more and more instructors are using videos and using flipped learning approaches. So this applies to a growing share of the instruction that’s taking place. Could you describe the design of your experiment, the four conditions that you used?

Alyson: Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of the four conditions, we were comparing positive emotional prosody versus neutral emotional prosody, and then we were also comparing the delivery conditions, the delivery lecture conditions, so it was a video condition and a audio condition. So based on that, we looked at the interaction between all of those conditions as well. So all participants were shown a 11-slide PowerPoint, and then within that, they were either presented with a video version or an audio version. So the video version would have a video of the instructor teaching on the upper right-hand corner, whereas the audio condition, they were just presented visually with the lecture slides.

Kristin: Nice and tell us a little bit about your participants.

Alyson: So the participants were 80 undergraduate students at St. Mary’s University, and within that there were 20 students assigned to each condition group. They had a mean age of roughly 20 years old, and they spanned all of the degree programs within the school.

Kristin: And I know somebody is going to want to know what the lecture was about. So tell us what the lecture was about, the 11 slides.

Alyson: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] So the lecture… pretty much when I was looking for a topic for something to teach, I wanted it to be something that could be taught relatively quickly, within the five- minute time period that I was looking for for the lecture. And I also wanted it to be something that was slightly more of a niche topic, which proved to be a bit more difficult, just in terms of finding a topic that I felt would work well under those kind of guidelines that I had set out. So I eventually turned to astronomy, and I looked at astronomical eclipses because I felt that was slightly more niche that the majority of students wouldn’t have been previously taught that topic, whereas, while I could still kind of maintain that five-minute duration while being able to include all the information that I wanted to quiz them on.

John: So what did you find when you compared the outcomes in terms of how much the students remembered from these videos?

Alyson: So we assessed them based on a 10-question multiple choice quiz. So once they watched the lecture video, they would complete that quiz directly after. And we found that in terms of the results of the study, that the participants who had been given the positive emotional prosody condition performed significantly better on the quiz than the students who had the neutral emotional prosody so even just comparing that, the positive emotional prosody condition had a mean score of 72.25% on the quiz, whereas the neutral emotional prosody conditions had a mean score of 56.5%. And we found there was really no significant difference when just considering the delivery of the lectures, comparing audio versus video. But the interaction was quite interesting that we ended up finding. So I had initially assumed that combining positive emotional prosody with the video lecture, just due to that potential increased social presence, would result in a better score on the quiz. It actually turned out that while emotional prosody, when conveyed positively increased the quiz scores, it was actually that audio condition that resulted in increased grade scores compared to all the other conditions, which I thought was quite interesting.

Kristin: So if there was positive emotional prosody, if it was the positive emotional prosody condition, they had significantly higher scores on the quiz, as long as there was no video, yes? Did I get that right?

Alyson: That is right. Yes. [LAUGHTER]

Kristin: It sounds like it was a surprise. I know that you have some explanations about why that might have been the case. What do you consider to be the most promising explanations?

Alyson: I think overall, I found the cognitive load theory to be quite helpful with explaining that interaction, and it was really just focusing on the amount of information that was presented to the students and how that impacted them cognitively, in terms of what they were able to retain. So I think for most of the students, it just kind of helped that the audio condition was in combination with positive emotional porosity was interesting to them, enough to engage them cognitively, but it wasn’t at the point where it was exceeding their cognitive threshold, where it would be negatively impacting their cognitive processes such as attention and recall and comprehension, whereas I think it was the video condition that really was just too much in terms of cognitive threshold, and it just exceeded that threshold and eventually just negatively impacted their grades.

Kristin: So kind of a sweet spot of attention without too much, without going over in terms of what they were being asked to pay attention to, both the facial expressions of the instructor, for example, and the content.

Alyson: Absolutely, yeah.

John: One way of stating this is that the video of the instructor was distracting them from the content on the slides?

Corinne: Yes, exactly. And I think I’ll just give you a bit of a definition for cognitive load theory. It’s essentially where we get a limited amount of information that we can process and that varies from individual to individual, of course. T here’s a normal distribution that most of us can maintain attention, maintain active learning with a certain amount of information, some of us more so or less, but we each have these individual thresholds that are reached, and when that threshold is reached, that’s essentially your working memory bench or table is full, and you can’t really process much more. So your ability to attend and comprehend learning what’s going on, it’s kind of maxed out. So yes, you’re quite right, John, like this notion that there’s this point by having that additional information of the instructor visible on the slides was just too much, and one way to conceptualize that is through this notion of distraction. When you have too much information, it is distracting and you can’t absorb the information that you probably could if there was less information there.

Kristin: I know that your study doesn’t go this far. I expect that people who are teaching online, who are using a lot of video, that they would argue that there are other benefits that they’re getting from that, that they’re, for example, trying to form an individual relationship across space and time, and that they’re using it instead as a motivational tool, or something like that. I know this is beyond what your study looked at, but what are your thoughts on that?

Corinne: I think that’s a great point. This is part of what Alyson and I were interested in. There’s this kind of general… ever since COVID, particularly… this general assumption that being visible is better, like as an instructor, but we have very little evidence that it’s real. In fact, this study kind of shows the opposite pattern of effect. So, in terms of adding the video, the video yourself, as John says, might be a distraction. This study is a small study. Of course, it needs replication. We need larger sample sizes, of course. But what I tend to see in terms of the online learning world, I’d like to see more evidence-based pedagogy, particularly when it comes to things that are related to like attention and memory and recall, because those are things that we naturally depend on, we take for granted in a classroom environment, because you can see your students and you can engage with your students, and you can tell if somebody is on their phone or asleep. But in an online environment, of course, that feedback is often one way, and the assumption is that, well, if they see me while I have these slides on, this is going to be better. But do they really need to see you? Maybe not. Do they really need to hear you speak with some enthusiasm or emotion when you’re speaking? These results seem to support that instead.

Kristin: I’m struck, because right now, in this environment, the listeners for the podcast are going to be listening to people with positive, emotional prosody and no video. But right now, as we’re recording, we’re using a platform in which we can see each other on screen. So we’re doing our best to replicate your conditions [LAUGHTER] right here at this moment. We’re trying to leave out the negative, the lack of emotional prosody though.

Corinne: There’s so much scope for more research here, really, which is really exciting about Alyson’s work here, is that it’s really just scratching the surface of what else we could really be examining within this area.

Kristin: The other thing that it brings to mind for me is research on distracted driving. That conversation in the car is less distracting than a phone conversation, for example, partly because the other passengers recognize the driving conditions, they can see if you’re entering a difficult driving situation. That perhaps it speaks more to the actual reality of being in the same place and time in which that personal connection makes a bigger difference. Perhaps there is something different about the online environment where we’re trying to create an individual connection, but at the same time, there is an artificiality to it, and prioritizing student learning over our assumptions about what might be creating a connection may be a more supported way to go.

John: I was really impressed by the magnitude of the effect, not just that it was statistically significant, but that was a really large difference in the scores. That result is remarkably strong.

Alyson: I was quite surprised by it as well. I think I was expecting there obviously to be some difference, but when I calculated all the quiz scores, I was genuinely surprised by how significant of a difference it was, especially when just considering the fact that it was a five-minute lecture video and immediately followed by a 10-question multiple choice quiz. I really wasn’t expecting the results to be that significant, especially just considering, yeah, like you said, the lack of research, the lack of basis that there was in terms of providing significant support, I suppose. Whereas it was just kind of surprising how significant that difference was.

Kristin: I’m guessing you triple, triple checked it. You’re like, “what?”

Alyson: I did, yes. [LAUGHTER]

Kristin: Two full questions better, yeah.

Alyson: Yeah, exactly. It was just very, very surprising. But it was really interesting to go from watching these people engage with the study and then have actual results to follow that I found that to be quite interesting.

Corinne: Alyson did a really strong study, I’m really proud of her. She had a really strong design, and she was really committed to recruitment and seeing through all the very important aspects that are required when you’re conducting research. And she did such a fine job that we are so happy to be able to go ahead and publish her work, and work with people like you as well, so that we can share these results.

John: And we should thank Michelle Miller, who wrote this up in her substack earlier, which is how we found out about this paper. We’ll include a link to your study and the studies you cited, as well as to Michelle Miller’s substack post on this, for people who may want to follow up a bit more. Going back to Kristin’s comment about how our podcast is audio, I did hear a statistic, actually, from some of our colleagues at Finger Lakes Community College this week, where they noted that 40% of podcasts have moved to a video format. We have chosen not to do that for a number of reasons. The main one is we mess up a lot, [LAUGHTER] and this way we can edit out all the mistakes before we release it, but also, we like to listen to podcasts with just the audio, and both Rebecca and I at least, generally don’t watch videos quite as much because it takes more time to sit there and watch the video, when with a podcast, you could be driving, you could be walking, you could be doing other tasks. For us, we’re probably going to stick with it, even though we do see more and more podcasts moving to a video format. But at least now we have a little bit of empirical evidence to support the continued use of audio only.

Kristin: And we always end by asking: “What’s next?”

Corinne: Well, like I said earlier, I think that Alyson’s study here really just opens up a whole can of worms for all sorts of very exciting new leads into research. One of the things that Alyson and I certainly have been discussing is we’re assessing this in terms of student recall or performance on a task, but it would be really interesting to look at how students perceive themselves, emotional prosody, within online learning mechanisms. Because I think it’s something that I would assume that most students pick up on and have preferences based on the emotional prosody of their instructors, and that would be reflected in terms of whether they think that instructor is a better quality instructor or not. And what does that mean in terms of the content that they actually relay? And this is another thing that we were thinking about, which was really maybe a little bit off the wall, but kind of interesting. You’re familiar with the uncanny valley phenomenon, right? And we’re thinking, what if there’s like, an uncanny valley for emotional prosody? What if trained people who are more neutral on their emotional prosody. How would that be perceived by learners or by people listening? Would they be convinced necessarily, or would they be like, “Oh no, there’s something going on here?”

Kristin: For listeners who may not be familiar with the uncanny valley. Can you quickly describe it?

Corinne: Yeah. So the uncanny valley phenomena is this notion that humans are essentially kind of very suspect [LAUGHTER] to robots. We have a high sensitivity to the artificial. We’re very kind of good at sussing out what’s artificial versus what is not. And that is found across a range of kind of things in the world. So whether it’s robots or different kinds of aspects of learning modalities, we’re good at picking up on artificial versus real. And this is an effect that’s evident in infancy, like it’s evident from very early on. Very young children will be able to discern inanimate versus animate objects, inanimate versus animate movement, etc, physical properties. And this extends into, of course, you know, as you get older, but in terms of an uncanny value, and when it comes to emotional prosody, and not all instructors are built the same. You know, I think about all your university profs. I’m sure we all had University profs, I’m one of them, that had a more kind of flat effect when they talked, they spoke more monotone and they kind of talked like this. They probably had a reputation for speaking a little bit more monotone, but in today’s world in higher education, there’s certainly a lot more emphasis on pedagogy, on teaching and improving skills and attributes of our instructors, which is great. But can you teach emotional prosody? Can you teach someone to speak with more emphasis and cadence and expression? And if you could, what impact would that have on people?

Kristin: Or could you essentially auto tune them into it in an online environment? Would that be perceptible? How would it be perceived by students if they knew or didn’t know? I mean, we see what auto tune does to music, it’s used sometimes in the background and is an embarrassment, if people find out, other times in the foreground, as a musical technique. With all the tools we’ve got, certainly there would be a way to manipulate it.

Corinne: Absolutely. Fascinating, you can do all sorts of things, and with AI now too, I mean, right? Like we are in this weird world of we’re not quite sure what’s real anymore or what is and I don’t know exactly what that would do to things. You could probably try to set up different aspects of non- real people doing this kind of thing now, and test that in terms of perception and learners or people in general.

John: And ElevenLabs and some of the other AI tools have developed some very realistic, emotional prosody in terms of their speech. And it would be interesting to do an experiment when people are faced with AI avatars delivering that versus perhaps actual instructors. [LAUGHTER] Because we do see AI avatars being used increasingly in a lot of social media, a lot of ads and so forth, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they started showing up in some online instruction.

Corinne:Yeah, kind of terrifying, [LAUGHTER] for a number of reasons. But yeah, there’s a lot of questions there. And I mean another thing, I love research, so when I started thinking about all the other things, you know, it gets really exciting. But like, at what point does emotional prosody compete with content? Like, there has to be some type of like, I would assume there has to be some type of U-shape there in terms of that effect. I kinda think about, like, people who are very convincing speakers in terms of the way that they speak with that emotional prosody, but the content is incongruent with the actual delivery. How is that interpreted? What impact does that have on recall of the message that they’re giving? So yeah, lots of really cool things to explore.

John: And I do have to say, when I was reading this, one of the things I was thinking about was the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and that little video clip, that little segment in the middle where Ben Stein was talking about tariffs and how harmful tariffs could be in the economy. And apparently that message never got through to students, or we wouldn’t be in the current situation we are in the U.S. Maybe it’s because we tend not to have enough emotional prosody in our economics classes.

Corinne: Well, I want to say anything, but, [LAUGHTER] yeah, there’s some weird stuff going on there. [LAUGHTER]

Kristin: That is really funny. [LAUGHTER]

John: And so Alyson, what are you doing now?

Alyson: I am currently working as a 911 dispatcher with EMS. I am hoping to apply to graduate school in the next year or two to kind of pursue that. I am hoping to volunteer as well within the next bit, and also just hopefully to engage in some future research opportunities. I think just working with Dr Syrnyk through this whole experience has been very helpful in terms of mushing together my education, I suppose, in terms of all the courses I’ve taken in the past about research. It’s really shown me how important research is, and especially the discussions that can result from research that occurs. So I think that it’s just really made me quite passionate for future research opportunities that I could possibly have, where the research that we’ve done here could possibly lead. I think that would be really interesting to see.

John: And you’re off to a great start already doing some research that can have a significant impact potentially on how people teach online classes and how students learn. Anything that we can do to help improve that would be really useful.

Alyson: Yeah, absolutely. Especially just as online learning becomes increasingly prevalent in university classrooms. It’ll especially be interesting to see how different forms of lectures are incorporated into online platforms. There are some classes that I’ve taken, like a statistics course, where it’s very much more involved. It’ll be interesting to see how that kind of forms from where it is now into just based on research, distant into the future.

John: Well, thank you. We really enjoyed talking to you, and thank you for sharing your research and this discussion of your work with us.

Kristin: Yes. Thank you both.

Corinne: Yes. Thank you for having us. It’s been wonderful and nice to get to know you a bit and see you. It’s just been a great opportunity.

Alyson: Yeah, thank you so much.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

John: Editing Assistance provided by Madison Lee.

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151. Video Conferencing

Posted in classroom community, edtech, engagement, higher education, hybrid, K-12, learning, online learning, pedagogy, teaching, video
September 2, 2020

Although video conferencing tools are not new, the global pandemic has resulted in a dramatic expansion in faculty use of this technology in their learning environments. In this episode, Rick McDonald joins us to discuss ways in which we can use these tools to create productive and engaging learning experiences for our students. Rick is an instructional designer at Northern Arizona University who has extensive consulting experience in higher education and in K-12.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Although video conferencing tools are not new, the global pandemic has resulted in a dramatic expansion in faculty use of this technology in their learning environments. In this episode, we focus on ways in which we can use these tools to create productive and engaging learning experiences for our students.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer.

Rebecca: Together, we run the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego.

[MUSIC]

Rebecca:
Our guest today is Rick McDonald, an instructional designer at Northern Arizona University, who has extensive consulting experience in higher education and in K-12. Welcome, Rick.

Rick: Hello, how are you today?

Rebecca: Great, thanks!

John: Today’s teas are:

Rick: I am a coffee drinker myself, but at least this early in the morning tea is more later in the day for me. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: I have Irish breakfast tea today,

John: And I’m drinking ginger peach green tea. We came through a really challenging spring semester, where people suddenly had to move online, and we’ve gone through a really difficult summer. We want to talk a little bit about video conferencing. In general, I think everyone’s become familiar with some form of video conferencing software. Zoom has suddenly become known by pretty much all faculty, one way or another, but there’s Collaborate and other tools as well. How can faculty become more effective in using video conference tools?

Rick: Well, I think, to start, we can all just relax a little bit but teaching with the video conferencing doesn’t have to be tremendously different. There are a few things that are absolutely different, and a few things to just consider that aren’t really such huge problems. First of all, when we’re teaching on video conferencing, we really need to know the software. Some schools are using multiple kinds of software. And I would choose the one that you know best. I would, again, relax and keep a nice and slow pace when we’re teaching over video conferencing, sort of frenetic pace can be very difficult for the remote student to stay engaged with, and at the same time making the class engaging, just like you would in your regular classroom. So, when we’re teaching, we try and engage the students in the classroom. When we’re teaching with video conferencing, we need to find ways to engage those remote students as well.

John: In terms of getting comfortable, one thing I’ve recommended to a lot of people is that, if they’re new to using video conferencing, they should work with other people in their department who may also be new with that, and take turns hosting meetings, so they get to play with all the tools. And if people do that a little bit, there’ll be a whole lot more comfortable, I think, once they arrive at their classroom. Is that something you’d recommend, too?

Rick: Absolutely. And really, I would recommend that those partnerships go on past the preparation stage, if it’s possible to find a faculty member who you can either team teach with, or you can assist when they teach their class and they can assist you when you teach your class. That can be really useful because, let’s say we have a very large classroom, we’re probably going to mute the mics of the remote students so that we don’t hear every dog barking and train going by 100 times. So, as we have been muted, somebody, if they have a problem during the class, we have to have some way of knowing about it. And generally that’s going to be through the chat. So, most of these applications have a chat that can go on simultaneously. And again, in larger classes, it’s not going to be very effective to be monitoring the audio and video of all of the remote students. So, if we use the chat and say, let the students know, “Hey, if you’re simply confused, put a bunch of question marks into the chat. If you have a question, ask it in the chat.” But if you have a partner who’s working with you, and monitoring that chat, that keeps you engaged, and you focused on your teaching, but the person monitoring the chat can say, “Excuse me, Rick, you know, I really didn’t understand that last point you made, could you please go back over it?” or “I didn’t hear it,” or as a partner can say, “Somebody online didn’t hear it” or “There’s a lot of confusion online right now. Could you please go back over that point?” I think that’s really useful. And if you can’t do that with a partner, it’s useful to try thinking about rotating it as a student role. I know there’s some negative issues with that; there’s some problems in that you’re adding something to a student that may have some difficulty keeping up with the content and monitoring the chat at the same time. But, I think it is really important to have a way to monitor and check for understanding and check for technical problems while you’re teaching, and it’s difficult to do that yourself.

John: If faculty want to keep tabs on how things are going with their students, what else can they do besides monitoring the chat?

Rick: In smaller classes, you can keep an eye on the videos as well, just like you would in your regular classroom. If you have a seminar or discussion-based class that’s smaller, then you’re probably going to have enough room to see the students and keep an eye on them and scrolling through them and just visually checking for understanding. Then there are other things that we can do. We can do live polls, we can do quizzes in our LMS and other activities that will help make sure that students are getting the materials that we want.

Rebecca: I’m newer to video conferencing and have been experimenting with recording so if I needed to share something with a student that was sick, one thing that I realized, for example, in using Zoom is that the polling doesn’t show up in a recording automatically. So, there’s things that, if you don’t test it ahead of time, you might not know how to do it or how to set it up. So, I really found being able to practice with colleagues in advance really helpful, because I’ve discovered some of those stumbling blocks that I didn’t realize were going to be stumbling blocks.

Rick: Right? Well, and that’s key. The technology and where we’re going to be teaching, it might not be our own technology. It’s easier for us to practice on our own computers and our own systems in our own homes in locations where we plan on teaching. But in this case, we are probably going to be teaching in a classroom, and that classroom is going to be designed and laid out by, depending upon the school, somebody in IT or in a teaching and learning center, something like that. And we don’t know how it’s set up. We need to go in there and test it. We need to know how to change the camera if we’re going to use a document camera, for example, we need to be able to switch back and forth. We need to know how to do all those things. And that practice is beyond us becoming familiar with it. Like you were saying there, where you did a recording, I really recommend that people go to every room that they’re going to be using and record a session. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a full lecture, but test what it’s like when you’re speaking at the podium and how you need to speak to be clear, make sure that the levels are right on the microphone for your particular voice. My voice is deep and loud, and it carries very well. So, generally, people can hear me, even if I’m a bit aways from the microphone, but that’s not true of everybody. You really need to know where the mic picks up and how well it picks up. You need to know where the frame is in your video. So, if you like to move around a little bit and walk back and forth from one side of the room to the other, that is probably not going to work in this environment. So, if you want to do it, you need to know where you are in the frame, so that you stay in view for those remote students. If you tend to walk around… and this is something that we’ve been taught to do as teachers, or have learned to do… that we want to walk around and engage the class. We want to make sure that people are paying attention. And we can really do that by moving around. Unfortunately, if we’re teaching to a group of remote students, when we move around, they might not be able to hear us as well. But they’re also then staring at a blank wall or the chalkboard or the whiteboard. And that makes it a lot harder to pay attention for those remote students, and even more so for anyone watching a recorded session.

John: And all that’s good advice, not just during a time of pandemic, but before any semester because one of the worst things you can do is go into class for the first day and set the example of fumbling with the controls and not being able to get this class started well, and that negative impression can have a pretty significant impact on how students see you and your class. So, you want to have a really good strong start, however you’re starting, and working with either the classroom or your computer controls, I think is really helpful, as you said,

Rick: I think we can expect some healthy skepticism from the students too. So we want to try and alay those by being prepared. It’s difficult for people who have never done this before, didn’t plan on doing it, would never have agreed to teach using this modality in any other circumstances. I think, fortunately, most people recognize that this is a big issue today and understand why schools are doing this. We may not all agree with every step that our administrations have taken, but I think we all do agree we’d like students to be able to learn this fall. My daughter’s starting college this fall in California in an art center, and he didn’t want to wait another year to start college. Personally, I would have been super happy to take another year. I would have just taken a year off. I’d be in, like Costa Rica or somewhere far away from here, if I was eighteen, [LAUGHTER] but there’s all kinds of life circumstances. People want to keep their careers moving on and it’s also a very different world today than it was when I was in school.

John: I think it’s a very different world than any of us were in school. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: Indeed. For faculty that are having to teach from home or from their offices, and they haven’t done that before, can you talk us through some ways we might want to think about setting up our workspaces to be more effective and efficient.

Rick: I think, first off, we want to try and find a room that is relatively quiet and well insulated, sound wise, or isolated. That can be difficult. When we’re teaching at home, our children are at home too. Ideally, if you’re in a lucky situation, there are other people to help keep the chaos away from the room while we’re teaching, as much as we can. Secondly, I think finding a room that is well lit is a good thing. And then go ahead and start your camera, set up the room, turn on the lights the way you think they’re going to be, and then see how it looks. In the room I’m in right now, there’s an overhead light, and if I turn that light on, it’s not actually going to light my face better, because the way the lights going to come down, it’s actually going to hit the top of my head, and then put most of my face in the shadow. So, in that case, it’s actually better for me to have the natural light coming in from the window. But, we need to sort of think those things through in a way that we haven’t before. So, it’s good to bring up any video app really, and look at it on your computer and then adjust the lighting. So, the computer itself is going to provide some lighting, but then you might need to bring in an extra lamp to put on one side or the other to sort of balance the light. The other thing you can do is, if you have a light that directional and adjustable that you might normally use for reading or something like that, if it’s bright enough, you can actually turn it away from you and face it towards the wall or towards a lightly colored object if your wall is dark, and what that’ll do is that’ll bounce the light off of the wall and onto your face, and a light like that can otherwise be too harsh, but that way it can light it and sort of balance your light, keep your face well lit. Things like that can be really useful. And then again, just making sure that your mic is going to pick you up. Generally, the mics aren’t a big problem when we’re teaching at home in our rooms. Sometimes a headset can be useful. Testing and finding what works best for you, I think, is key in just making sure that the video appears in a way that everybody can see well and clearly.

John: And this was implied in your discussion, but having a natural light is really good, but you don’t want that natural light behind you because then you get more of that shadow effect. If you have a bright sunlit window behind you, which I’ve seen in so many faculty at webinars, you just see a dark blur surrounded by this bright light and you want to arrange it so, if possible, that light is facing you. I had that problem in my office and I had to put up a blackout curtain over the window so I didn’t get washed out that way.

Rick: Right, if you can’t change where your desk is facing and the light is behind you, that’s not gonna work. Even if it’s in front of you, if the way the sun shines at certain times of the day is straight in, it’s gonna make you squint, you’re gonna end up washed out, so the details on your face will get washed out. So, then you might want to think about curtains in that case. We want to work on the lighting so that we’re clear, that people can see our faces and our mouths. That helps people understand what we’re saying, but it also helps them convey all the nonverbal communication that’s part of the way we speak, that nobody can see in this podcast. But when we’re doing our video conferencing, they can absolutely pick up all kinds of clues on whether we’re smiling, on how serious we are when we’re speaking, based upon our facial expression. And you can’t really see that if, like you said, you’re backlit, whether it’s from the window or whether it’s from where the lights are in your room. So, we really just want to straighten out the lighting as best we can right from the beginning.

Rebecca: Also thinking about time of day is key and remembering that in the fall, we’re gonna head into shorter days. So, you might have really good sunlight at the end of the day right now, that lighting is great, but it might actually be much darker. [LAUGHTER]

Rick: That’s absolutely true, especially for those of you up in New York. [LAUGHTER] It’s a little less of an issue for my friends south in Tucson or Phoenix or Corpus Christi. [LAUGHTER]

John: I noticed behind you there’s a painting and some artwork on the wall, but there’s nothing that’s really distracting, that’s taking the attention away from you. Is that something perhaps that faculty should also do? Not have something really distracting in the background?

Rick: Absolutely. Anybody doing any video conferencing, whether it’s for anything that besides your friends, it’s not only going to matter because it’s distracting, but you might have things that… I’m looking around this room and right now I think everything… over the past four months, we have made sure that everything behind us is non-controversial as well. Because you may have artwork in your home that’s beautiful and wonderful, but we don’t necessarily want to begin religious discussion at the beginning of our computer science class, or something like that, right? So, we want to just keep everything nice and clean and neat.

Rebecca: Like my bland gray walls behind me. [LAUGHTER]

Rick: Yeah, exactly. The bland gray wall works really well. [LAUGHTER] So does a nice piece of artwork, I think is perfectly fine… and really any artwork is fine. I don’t mean to be too prudish on these things, but especially if we’re teaching 18 to 22 year olds, sometimes they can be a little bit more easily distracted by things like that. Well, actually, really anybody… You see something that’s gonna upset you, it’s gonna upset you. So let’s think about that and just make sure that the room is welcoming, and, and ready for you to focus on your coursework and not on the room.

John: In a lot of ways, the easiest environment to teach in that sort of framework is when you’re in a room where you get to control all that, to control the sound and so forth. Many colleges are going to be using a system in which there is some type of a hyflex structure, without much flexibility in terms of how students choose to engage, where some students will be present in the classroom in reduced numbers and spread out across the room, while other people will be participating online synchronously. And some other people might only be available asynchronously because of other issues, maybe because of healthcare issues, maybe because they’re back at home taking care of relatives, or they themselves are perhaps in quarantine somewhere, and may not be able to always participate at the same time. in that environment. What are some of the challenges that faculty might face in trying to engage in say, active learning type activities, which require some interaction among the students in person, among the students online, and perhaps even between the online and the face-to-face students?

Rick: Let’s take that last example first. From a teaching standpoint, that’s ideal. We’re mixing our in-class students with the remote students. It’s helping us build community. And it’s great. And that can work really well. But, we need to think about the environment. So, if we do one person locally with one or a few students remotely, then the local student needs to have a computer, or perhaps they could do it through their telephone. And we probably want them to have a headset on because, if everybody in the classroom has a computer open, and is communicating with people from off site, we’re going to just sort of have a bit of chaos in all the sound coming from the speakers. But, if we can find a way to do that, if the room is suitable, or if there’s easy ways to break students out, that’s sort of the ideal. Otherwise, I think we’re looking at building breakout sessions within the remote students so that the remote students and… you mentioned Collaborate earlier… students can make their own Collaborates and then work together there and then come back to the central Collaborate that the class is in and we can do sessions like that and then have them present the results of their group breakout. They can communicate that back. That’s another way of doing it. And then the local students can obviously just meet in groups within the room.

In the LMS, we may find that the group tool is something we need to use for these video classes, though, because some schools are not actually doing the work of dividing the section up. So, if I’m going to have a third of the class come on Monday, a third of the class come on Wednesday, and a third of the class come on Friday, I’m going to need some way to decide that. And since most of the LMS tools do have groups, I can either randomly assign students or I could put signup sheets for the days. And then I could also use that group rule to do breakouts, whether they’re asynchronous or synchronous, it will help to have them set up. And so I can, again, either do it randomly or through sign up. And then there’s all kinds of group activities that people can do once we get into that asynchronous realm. In the synchronous realm, they’re meeting, they’re speaking, they’re coming up with a plan and then they’re reporting it back to the group and the asynchronous it might be different. They might meet, come up with something, and then post their work to the LMS. for everyone to review.

Asynchronous environments can still be very interactive and active through discussions, through group work online. There’s lots of different tools that you can use for that. And we can also engage the students with polling. There’s Kahoots!, I’m not sure everybody’s familiar with those. But in, Kahoots!, there are ways of doing polls and you don’t necessarily have to have your institution on board. So, if your institution doesn’t have a polling system, or it’s not built in… like Collaborate has a built-in polling system… I believe Zoom does as well. But, if you can do some kind of polling that can help the students stay engaged. You can also do little quizzes in a similar way with the polling… and just sort of checking for understanding, I think those are great ways of helping students stay engaged.

John: And in terms of Kahoot!s, you can do it synchronously for the people who are in the room and remote, and then you can have some discussion of their questions after you go through them. But, you can then set it up so that you can share the quiz online so that students, at least, would have the option of participating at asynchronously as well. They wouldn’t have the same real-time discussion capabilities of the students who were there synchronously, but at least they would have the same type of retrieval practice as an exercise with Kahoot!.

Rick: When you talk about the recorded version of your video conference or your streamed lecture. That is not an ideal way to learn or to teach, to watch a recorded session of a bunch of other people. People are going to tend to zone out and not be able to follow everything that happens. They’re going to be distracted by the other things going on and there isn’t going to be anything pulling them back in. Because when you say, “Okay, everybody do this poll…” well, on the recorded version, and they’re gonna do it whenever later, they may not pause it, they may not even notice that you told them to do something right away. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t think people should record their classes. I absolutely think we should. But, I think if we have a substantial number of students who are not able to attend live, then we are much better off with a very strong online learning component. At least in my opinion. A lot of these ideas that sort of flex idea came because people read work by Brian Beatty from San Francisco State where he coined the term HyFlex. When I was researching this when I started at NAU, I found that there is HyFlex, but there’s also been other people who’ve done very similar types of teaching, calling it different types of things, but it hasn’t been widely used. But, when you look at what they did, if you read the articles and research around this, which is relatively scant. But, what there is pretty much shows that all of the previous experiments with this involve having somebody there to assist the faculty member, whether it was a partner or a learning assistant or an educational technologist, somebody was there helping. And then the other thing that they really all did is build extremely good and strong online components. And in the San Francisco State one, they didn’t necessarily have to show up in person at all, they could do it entirely through the learning management system. And in my ideal world, schools would give faculty options so we would be able to teach one day a week live, and we would stream that for anybody who wanted it and everybody would have, say, one live session. And then in my ideal world, there would be an online component for the other half of the course for that week. And that would, I think, give students more actual flexibility in learning, but it would also, because the strong online component is so important, it would give them real incentive to create that strong online component.

John: And that would also have advantage if schools have to shut down at some point because if they do shut down, the face-to-face component will go away. And having that ready would make the transition a lot smoother, I think.

Rick: Absolutely. And if you are counting on everybody showing up every week, in the middle of a giant pandemic, you’re probably going to be disappointed. So, if you’re hoping to pass out papers, the one day a week that the students come to class, I think you’re going to find yourself with a lot of headaches. So, I think having your materials online… that’s the whole thing with an online learning course or a video conferencing course. And we didn’t really get into my background with that. I ran, for 13 years, a video conferencing system at a community college here. We’re the second largest county in the country and more rural than the largest county. And so at one point, we were teaching students over video conferencing who were living at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. So, those students, they’d have to hike out 12 miles or take a helicopter and then drive for four hours to get to our main campus. So, that was why it made so much sense for us and why we had a video conferencing program that went on to 2015. And that’s why it was like that. It was because there was this real reason to do it. But, when I was managing it, I would tell faculty, we have to build online components. And the reason is, the plan that had been made by the academic leadership was… well, we had this complicated system of faxing papers and collecting things through fax, we were already building online components. We started with WebCT and I said if we use WebCT for this we can do low-stakes testing through WebCT. We can distribute papers. When the students lose those papers, we don’t have to worry about finding a secretary or an administrative assistant, or another professor who’s at the other campus to run and print it out. And in the cases where we were working in even more remote areas, we didn’t have those types of resources. So, we really needed to use the online component. And that’s even more true if your students are going to end up staying at home or if somebody gets exposed and has to self isolate for a few weeks, they’re not going to be in person. So, having that online component really is going to make your life easier. And as you said, right now, when all these plans were being made, our state looked fine. But our state now is one of the highest rates of infection in the world. So, I don’t know what it’ll be like in a month. Nobody does.

Rebecca: I didn’t want to follow up a little bit on this conversation. We’ve talked a lot about what it’s like for faculty in planning, but not really entirely about the student side of remote learning, like what their systems might need to be like or what kinds of rules we might have in place? Or what kinds of expectations we have about participation in terms of a synchronous video component. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Rick: I think one advantage we have that this is happening in 2020 is that, if we’re looking at engaging in something that’s primarily video and audio, our telephones really today can do a lot of that, and even answering short polls we can do on our phones. So, the students do have that possibility. But, ultimately, a computer is a little bit more effective. And one of the things I am worried about, actually, is access to that technology for some students who may normally rely on computer labs at our schools. And when we’re thinking about it as faculty members, it’s tricky for those of us in instructional design and educational technology, who have been doing this our entire careers to remember that not everybody has all the tools that we do. And so I’m really hoping that schools are either making socially distanced labs available, or ideally having equipment that is available for checkout for their lower-income students who may not have all the equipment. And I think the other problem that we’re going to have for students is going to be quiet learning environments. A lot of students live with multiple people living in the same room. A lot of students live in environments that are a little bit noisier, and we’re gonna have to adjust to that and figure out, based upon the size of our class, like I mentioned earlier, do we need to mute them? How are we going to check for their understanding if they’re muted? Are we going to have all the video available? You mentioned what the students have at home. What is their internet connection? Do they have a strong enough internet connection? It probably needs to be at least in the megabit realm for this to work at all. And I think the other problem is that sometimes students are going to be on shared connections. And what I found in the spring, that we had switched from the telephone company, because I was able to get a much higher bandwidth to the cable company, which generally has been great. I’m working at home, my partner works at home and that really hasn’t been a problem. But I tell you what, when my two daughters were both participating in Zoom conferences, my spouse was on a Zoom conference, and I was on a Zoom conference, we were not all doing video, it just didn’t work. And so we had to mute some of those sections. And really, some students may not even want their video on. And so I think we’re gonna have to be open and accomodating for those types of questions that students might have. Because they may be a privacy issue. It may be a technology issue, and if they don’t have their video on, I don’t think we need to spend a whole bunch of time talking to them about their video and why isn’t it on, whether it should be on. I really feel like there’s so many different reasons that are valid for the camera to be off, that we should probably let some students participate without video feeds.

John: And the same argument can be made for audio because if they’re in a noisy environment, they may not be able to even speak without a lot of background noise. It’s one thing to invite students to turn on their video and audio if they can, but we probably shouldn’t require it.

Rick: I think you’re right. I think it’s also one of the real key differences between that built video conferencing environment that was pretty popular a good 10 to 20 years ago. Those rooms were purpose built. Every single room was purpose built, whether it was built for somebody teaching or whether it was built for the student receiving the mat. rials. Everybody went into a room that was, ideally sound isolated, that had a good mic setup. And that’s just not going to be the case when everybody’s at home.

John: We always end with the question: “What’s next?”

Rick: I think what’s next, globally… what a lot of us in instructional technology and instructional design really hope is that this fall is gonna go better than last spring. Because I can’t tell you how many, what I personally think are bogus, articles came out saying, “Look, it proves that distance learning doesn’t work.” No, it proves that distance learning needs preparation, and you can’t do it with a day’s notice. So, hopefully this fall, people will have much better experiences. I really hope people contact all the resources that are available at their schools. If they have instructional designers, those people can really help you build that online component. There are people who have been working in video at your school. I know there’s a number of people at Northern Arizona University with extensive experience. Reach out to those people, they can really help you. They can make sure that the room is the way you need it to be. I would say really reach out. But, as far as what’s next, I hope that what’s next is that people say, Wow, building an online component really made my life easier. And that they’ll start building online components all the time every year. And I’ve been pushing that to the point of obnoxiousness…. sorry, folks who worked with me… for decades now, that it’s more work that first semester you set it up, but every subsequent semester, using your learning management system, even for your in-person classes, is going to help. And now we’ve seen that it helps if there’s a global pandemic, but we can also see that it could help if there was a massive forest fire that went through your town, and everybody had to evacuate and you didn’t want to call this semester a loss. And there have been some, more in K-12, but some experiences where that really did happen. People were able to do it, and it’s also really critical. I don’t know how much you guys talk about K-12. But, that’s an environment, too, where preparing for emergencies is easier to see now. But, also where college students may sometimes forget things, 12-year olds and 13-year olds forget things a lot. And so having the work online for them can really help them. So, I’m really hopeful. That’s what I think is next. What I hope is next is that we have a much better experience this fall under such trying circumstances.

Rebecca: Well, thanks so much for your insights and some thoughts about preparing for the land of video moving forward.

Rick: Thank you so much.

[MUSIC]

John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

[MUSIC]

116. Simple Sustainable Videos

Posted in classroom community, edtech, feedback, higher education, instructional communication, learning, online learning, teaching, video
January 15, 2020

Faculty are often reluctant to create video content for their classes because of concerns over technical expertise, the demands on their time, and discomfort being on camera. In this episode, Karen Costa joins us to discuss how videos can easily be created, save time, and improve connections with students.

Karen is an adjunct faculty member teaching college success strategies to online students and a faculty professional development facilitator at faculty Guild. She’s a staff writer for Women in Higher Education. She writes regularly about higher education and her new book, 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos, will be released from Stylus in the spring.

Show Notes

  • Faculty Guild
  • Costa, Karen (2020). 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos. Stylus Publishing (forthcoming, April 2020).
  • Podcast listeners can receive a 15% discount + free shipping and handling by using the discount code: TEA99 on the order form for 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos.
  • Karen Costa’s YouTube site to accompany 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos.
  • Powtoon
  • Screencast-O-Matic

Transcript

Rebecca: Faculty are often reluctant to create video content for their classes because of concerns over technical expertise, the demands on their time, and discomfort being on camera. In this episode, we focus on how videos can easily be created, save time, and improve connections with students.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer.

Rebecca: Together, we run the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego.

[MUSIC]

Rebecca: Our guest today is Karen Costa. Karen is an adjunct faculty member teaching college success strategies to online students and a faculty professional development facilitator at faculty Guild. She’s a staff writer for Women in Higher Education. She writes regularly about higher education and her new book, 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos, will be released from Stylus in the spring.

Welcome!

John: Welcome!

Karen: Thank you.

John: Our teas today are:

Karen: I love tea. I feel like I need to take a stance on tea in this podcast. [LAUGHTER] I go through phases with tea. I was in a huge tea phase a couple years ago, I had a holiday tea and had some ladies over for tea. It was really fun. And I’m not in a tea phase right now. So, I’m not drinking tea.

Rebecca: Well, maybe this episode will get you back into the tea phase.

Karen: I’m certainly going to re enter a tea phase at some point. It’s just a matter of time. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: I’m drinking English Afternoon. I almost feel guilty saying that.

John: You should.

Rebecca: Yeah.

John: And I’m drinking Bing Cherry Black tea, a Harry and David tea. We’ve invited you here to talk about your forthcoming book: 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos. Could you tell us a little bit about the origin of this project?

Karen: I can. [LAUGHTER] I have to say I just submitted the second round of edits and redid the index for the book. And I’ve been working on it for about a year now. And I feel like everyone already has it, and it’s wild… the entire book creation process. [LAUGHTER] If I can go back a bit… I fell in love with making videos in high school. So, I took a media class… junior and senior year… with one of my favorite teachers, Mrs. Bestwick. She was my English teacher as well. And a couple of my best friends were in the class. So, it was just a ton of fun. And when I think about what we got to do in that class, I’m still pretty amazed. Mrs. Bestwick… she was amazing. She gave us just this incredible opportunity to create. So, we hosted our own radio show junior year, and then senior year, the high school installed televisions in all the classrooms This was in the 90s, so that was like a big deal. And the media class, we did a morning “news show” where we read the announcements about the school and sometimes hard-hitting news like interviewing the star of the field hockey team and stuff like that. The show was called The Morning Minute, and I got to be a part of that. And I fell in love with being on camera and creating videos. I am an introvert, so I haven’t figured that out quite yet. But, I really loved the energy of doing that work. I know y’all are in Oswego. I went to Syracuse for undergrad, so I was right down the road. And I know how winters are up there. I went to Syracuse for broadcast journalism. That was my plan. I wanted to be a news anchor. And freshman year of college, I went to my advisor and I said, I want to change from broadcast journalism to undecided and he said “No, you can’t do that. No one does that.” He said, “everyone wants to change from undecided into broadcast journalism.” So I said, “Well, I’ll be the first.” And so I did. [LAUGHTER] I don’t know if that was a smart decision or not. But, I didn’t really do much with video for a while after that, and then sort of flash forward to around 2006, 2007 when I started teaching online, I was working in higher ed and I was teaching a college success course online. And I immediately was trying to figure out how to make that online course more engaging and to create a sense of classroom community and to connect with my students. And I thought, why not make more videos for my online classes, and I just went down the rabbit hole. And I’ve been there ever since. And trying to figure out ways to make videos and make them engaging and efficient and effective. And I hadn’t really thought about it much. And then a couple years into it, I was talking to somebody about it, and I said, “Oh my gosh, I circled back to something that I really loved a long time ago, and it just found a different expression.” I thought I was going to be on the news, which would have been a terrible fit for me because it’s a really intense environment [LAUGHTER} and I kinda like peace and quiet… and teaching in higher ed as a much better fit for me. And I figured out a way to bring videos into that. So, through that experience, I just fell in love with videos, and I’ve been figuring out ways to bring them into my teaching. And then I started talking about it to everybody who would listen, and started sharing that with faculty. So, the book was born of that experience.

Rebecca: What a great journey.

Karen: Yes, a full-circle journey. [LAUGHTER]

John: One of the nice things about your book is that you have some QR codes in the book that give you examples of the things you’re talking about.

Karen: Yes. So, this is funny, I can take zero credit for the QR codes. Those were the idea of my editor, John von Knorring, at Stylus. We were going back and forth on a couple of things and he said, “Karen, what do you think about using QR codes in the book?” And I was like, “Ooh, QR codes…” because the last exposure I had to QR codes was probably 10 years ago when they first came out… and remember you have get the QR code reader app on your phone. They were cool, but they were also a little clunky. And I am pretty intense about keeping things as simple and sustainable as possible, which is in the title of the book. So, I was really a little hesitant about that, like “Are faculty going to have to download an app and remember their app store password to get to these videos.” And John said, “No, QR codes are different now.” So, what I learned is you just open the camera on your phone and hold it over the QR code and you’re brought right to the video. So I said, “Okay, let’s give this a try.” And I’m so, so glad that he had this idea. Because, obviously, a book about videos is enhanced by giving people easy access to some of those videos. So when I was editing the book, and I kept coming across those QR codes, I was just so excited about the chance that faculty would have to access those videos easily. And the last thing I want to say about those I hope when people see the videos that they say “Oh, this is kind of basic, this is nothing special.” That would be the greatest compliment if they see a video and say this is nothing special, because my hope is they see them and think this is something I can do. I’ve been thinking about doing more on YouTube, and I found this site, this higher educator created and the videos were amazing. And I was floored. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so impressed by this.” And at the same time, I was like, “This is not in my power right now to do this…” like I could, but I just don’t have the time and energy. They were sort of hyper-produced polished professional videos, and I think it’s awesome that he did them and there’s a space for that. But, I’m here to advocate for a different type of video that any faculty will feel empowered to create. So, hopefully, when people see the videos, they think this is something I could do.

Rebecca: I really like to focus on being authentic and not doing something that’s overproduced because I think you’re right, that really does intimidate faculty. And sets them back like, “Oh, I can’t do that. I don’t have the time.”

Karen: Yep.

Rebecca: So if we’re doing something that is a little less polished, a little more authentic, a little bit more of in the moment, what are the benefits of doing it that way?

Karen: There’s a lot of benefits. And you mentioned time. So I’m going to start there. I don’t want to exaggerate, but I think we’re all sort of being bombarded. And I know I feel like I’m constantly working to protect my time, and that there’s so many external elements that are seeking to fill my time up. And I know the faculty that I work with are wearing multiple hats. They are teaching, they are department chairs, they are on committees, they come home and grade and prep, under really immense time challenges. So, one of the big philosophies in this book is that videos will make your life easier, and we’ll save you time. I couldn’t rationalize putting something else on faculty’s plate right now because they just have so much. My sense is that this is a system that will ultimately help faculty to be more efficient and to save them time. And the other piece of that that’s really important is that the types of videos that we’re talking about here humanize the online learning experience and the learning experience in general, whether you’re teaching online or land based. So, when you look at a really hyper-produced video, it can be visually stimulating and exciting and really cool to look at. But, it can sometimes make you feel separated and a bit distant. And there’s something special about creating a really basic simple video on the fly… just talking to your students… that helps create that connection. I get to say now… I’ve been excited to start talking about this… the woman who wrote the foreword to the book is just a force in higher education and online learning and the movement to humanize online learning. Her name is Michelle Pacansky-Brock, some of you might know her as Brocansky. That’s her Twitter handle and her website, and she was kind enough to write the foreword for the book and she’s done amazing work with this movement to humanize online learning. And that is a big part of these types of videos is to help students realize that you are a real person and not a robot. So, those are some of the benefits: saving time, not putting a ton of time into creating these videos, and building that human connection with students

John: Ane modeling that should make faculty feel more comfortable too, which makes it more likely they’ll actually start doing this.

Rebecca: Karen, can you elaborate a little bit more on ways that you save time… so, saving time by not making it hyper produced, but I think you were alluding to other ways you might save time as well.

Karen: Yeah, so one of the biggest realizations for me… I didn’t start making videos to save time… I talk about that there was sort of a creative passion for me and I wanted to connect with my students. I actually did a lot of not smart things in my video creation process early on, and I’m now able to share those stories with faculty to save them time. There’s a lot of like, “don’t do this” in the book. I would, for example, add lots of telling details to my first videos. So, I would be like “look at the snow outside of my house” and “can you believe it’s already snowing in November” or I’d say “Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody.” I did things like that. So, immediately, as soon as I did that, that video was something I couldn’t use again. And I would also mention specific dates like “the discussion post this week is due on March 27.” And so then that video was dead, I couldn’t use it again. So, one of the things I learned was how to make videos reusable so that I could reuse them from term to term… really just a simple strategy of staying general. So, instead of saying a specific deadline, say “I posted the deadlines for this assignment in the announcements, so please look there.” So, now I can use that video, in a lot of cases, in future terms. And the other thing is that I use videos for frequently asked questions. So, that was a huge realization for me when I would get all these repetitive questions from students term after term after term. Rather than always emailing every student and answering those questions, I could create videos that would be more proactive. So, that was a big shift I noticed in my online classrooms when I started creating videos was that students were more likely to accurately complete the assignments and to be putting forth great work and I didn’t get as many of those repetitive type questions because they were getting those answers in the videos. And that saved me a ton of time. Just, I think, a lot of folks realize that those emails, they seem like, “Oh, it’s just 30 seconds here or there answering them” but they really do add up. So, anything we can do to be proactive there and to still support students and student learning and to get those questions answered. But, to do it in a way that’s more reasonable, I think, is a really powerful shift and videos can help us do that.

John: So, you’ve talked a little bit about how videos can create more of a sense of instructor presence in online classes. And you’ve talked about how it can be used to reduce the workload on faculty by not having to treat an online courses, perhaps a set of independent study for each student were working one-on-one with them by email, but might videos also be useful in face-to-face classes to help flip the classroom?

Karen: That is another track that the book takes and I taught land-based classes before I started teaching online and then for quite a while I was teaching both at the same time. And what’s funny is that my online teaching started to influence my land-based teaching. So, I started to realize that I could use videos in my land-based classes. And that was inspired by my online teaching. That’s something I think we’re starting to talk more about how online courses were sort of originally seen as like second best, like, “Oh, if you can’t take classes in person, you could take them online if you have to.” And I’m an advocate for there’s tons of benefits to online learning, and many of us learn better and more effectively online. And I think we’re now starting to talk about how online teaching can influence land-based teaching. So, that option to bring videos into the land based-classroom is there. It’s something I write about in the book. I think there’s two aspects: the flipped learning mode, for folks who are interested in sort of taking more of the passive learning elements (and I know passive learning some people say is an oxymoron), but, if you’re going to bring students into a land-based classroom and do a lecture, why not record a lecture, send that out, and then do some more interactive stuff in the classroom. So, that’s kind of the flipped-learning model in a nutshell. So, I talk in the book about how you can do that. And I think people are interested in doing that. But a big obstacle is how do I even make those videos? So, I want to make that accessible to people. But, even if you’re not thinking about the flipped learning model specifically, you can send out a welcome video to your land-based students before class starts, to just say, “Hey, I’m looking forward to seeing you. Here’s what you could do to prepare for the first day of classes.” That’s like such a simple 10-minute strategy that gets students prepared to come in and get ready to learn and get going right from the start on that first day. So, that’s just a really simple thing that a land-based professor could do. I talk about when canceling classes or you’re traveling for a conference or we just had a bunch of snow days last week, there’s a lot of opportunities to bring videos into land-based teaching as well.

John: In fact, I had just done that. I was at the OLC conference with Rebecca and quite a few other people, and because I was teaching a large face-to-face class, I created a couple of videos…

Karen: Yay!

John: …inserted some questions, uploaded them as SCORM objects, so that way my students could still do some online quizzing like they would have done if they were in class with clickers. So, videos can have lots of useful purposes in classes.

Karen: Absolutely.

Rebecca: How would you recommend faculty get started?

Karen: Well, I guess the kind of cheeky answer is to buy my book. [LAUGHTER] But in the meantime, certainly folks can check out the videos that I created to accompany the book are posted on my YouTube page. Those are open to anybody and you’re welcome to see those. The way that I learned was through trial and error. The simplest recommendation I have is to record a welcome video on your phone in the YouTube app. That’s just the most basic, simplest type of video I think you can create and welcome students to your class, introduce yourself, tell them what they’re going to learn, why you’re excited about teaching, and share that either with your land-based class or in your online classroom. And what I would also add to that is there’s a lot of anxiety for faculty, and for people in general, about being on camera. And I think this is a challenge. We live in a society where we think, “Oh my gosh, everybody’s putting all of their lives online, what do you mean people are anxious to be on camera?” It’s very different. Facetiming your best friend is very different than recording a video for your students. And a lot of folks are very nervous to do that for a lot of reasons. So, I would just say that to be human, to be nervous, is okay. And I think we’re learning there’s actually a benefit to that. Your students are also nervous, they’re terrified of starting college or a new class. So to see you say, “I’m creating my first video and I’m a little nervous about doing this, but I’m going to give it a try…” that can have such a huge impact on your students and to help normalize fear and frustration which is really important, particularly for our first-generation college students. So, know that that’s not a negative, if you’re nervous to be on camera… that it actually might really be a positive thing for you and your students. This is another thing I get kind of passionate about. There’s a lot of energy out there about you have to create these hyper-produced perfect videos using this very complicated technology. Just shut that out. And if that comes to you down the road… and there is a place for that… I don’t want to knock that… but, it’s okay to keep it really, really simple… a two-minute welcome video, no bells and whistles, just you speaking from the heart is a wonderful place to start.

John: What are some of the most common mistakes that faculty make when they create videos? When should faculty think about trying to avoid?

Karen: Okay, this one is, I think, controversial is a strong word… but I know that I differ from some folks here… I don’t like when people use a script. And here’s why. When people are nervous about being on camera, I think it’s a very logical response to think “I’m going to create a script because if I get nervous, I’ll just read off the script.” And [LAUGHTER] I say this in the book. There’s a very specific population of folks who can read off a script and still be engaging and they are professional broadcasts. Most folks reading off a script… and I’m sure there’s exceptions to this rule… but, if you’re new to being on camera and recording videos, reading off a script can come off as very robotic, and, actually, sort of disengaging, and what we’re looking to do in these types of videos is to be very human and to connect and to reveal ourselves, not in an inappropriately personal level, but to just show our humanity… and reading off a script, I think, can be an obstacle to doing that. So, that’s one of the biggest mistakes I see is that when people are just clearly reading from a screen, it just kind of falls flat. So, my recommendation would be, have an idea of what you want to say and then just speak from the heart. And if you stumble over a few words, amazing, perfect, you get the chance now to show students here’s how to make a mistake and keep going. What could be a more powerful lesson to share with our students then how to make a mistake and keep going? So, that’s actually a good thing. I think the other big thing I see that I talk about is this idea that the camera eats your energy. [LAUGHTER] So, you can take someone who’s pretty engaging in a traditional land-based learning experience and put them on camera and the camera takes some of that energy out of you. So, you do have to be a little bit peppier on camera than you might be in a traditional setting. So, I just remind folks to just add a little bit of pep. I know that can feel weird at first, but to smile and be a little animated… you’ll think that you’re looking a little bit goofy, and you won’t, because the camera will take some of the energy out of that. So, just put a little pep and energy into your videos… to smile… to look like you’re having fun. And you know, fake it till you make it. If you pretend that you’re just loving being on camera and be a little silly, you’ll be surprised how quickly you just do start having fun with it.

John: I had students do some podcasts this semester, and that same issue came up about whether they should use a script, and what I suggested is before they record it they should try it three ways. One is they should try just doing it freeform, then they could record it when they reading from a script, and then they could record it where they’re using an outline to structure it. And I said, record all of those, listen to it and see which sounds more natural. And then that’s what you should go with when you record it. And, maybe that might be a good approach for faculty ,because some people might be better with a script; others might be better when they just have an outline; and others might be better just improvising things.

Karen: I like that, and obviously experience is a great teacher, right? So, one of my philosophies of teaching is that I want to help my students in any setting, whether they’re students or faculty, to become their own best teacher. So, absolutely try out different things. I also think… be a consumer of videos. A funny thing happens when you start making videos, you start to notice a lot about other people’s videos. So, notice the videos that you love that are really engaging and notice the ones that aren’t as engaging and that can give you some clues about your own video creation strategies. Absolutely. But, try out different things. I think that’s great.

Rebecca: A really similar conversation that I just had with my students about web design. they were telling me that they don’t use browsers on their phones. They use mostly apps, and they don’t know what websites look like.

Karen: Oh, wow.

Rebecca: And it’s like, “you might not know what a welcome video looks like if you’ve never seen one, or you never experienced something like that. So, it’s better to seek them out and find out what they’re like and what the genre is even like before making any judgment.”

Karen: Yeah, and you can learn so much. I learn as much from things that I love as from things that don’t seem to work for me. Like, “Oh my gosh, that’s fantastic to know that, for me, a script doesn’t work because I’ve seen a lot of videos where folks are obviously reading off a script.” So, that’s great knowledge. Just start to be a savvy video content consumer and notice what speaks to you. For me, what really speaks to me are just personal, no nonsense, no frills, speaking-from-the-heart types of videos. And again, I think there’s a place for all kinds of videos, but I noticed that there’s a strong contingent out there for the more hyper-produced videos. So, I want to be a voice for these more simple and sustainable videos for sure.

Rebecca: I think the key, like what you’re talking about, is finding whatever feels really authentic to you.

Karen: Yeah, absolutely.

John: One of the most common things that faculty do is create screencasts pf slideshows or other things. What’s your take on whether or not there should be a talking head on those videos? I’ve seen a lot of arguments in many directions there.

Karen: Yeah. So again, there’s not a one-size-fits-all answer there. So, I’ve tried to give people a bunch of options. If you have creative videos, where you’re on camera, and you are just incredibly uncomfortable, and that’s translating into the quality of the video that you’re creating. I really want to encourage people to try and practice and I do think most people will come around and start to feel more comfortable and create engaging content being on camera. But if eventually you’re at a point where you’re like “This is just not working for me. It’s not authentic for me.” Then maybe it’s time to set it aside at least for a time, and you can still make really engaging simple, sustainable videos for your students in a lot of other ways, and one of those is to create screencasts, where you’re not on camera, and you’re just recording the content on your screen. So, that’s a really big benefit. That said, I love being on camera. But there are days when I don’t want to be on camera, or I don’t feel that I’m camera ready, per se. I work from home and if just all heck has broken loose that day, but I still need to make a video for my students, I will just sometimes opt to not be on camera. So, it’s just a good option to be able to do screencasts. The other thing I do say is to think about attention and cognitive load, and I almost always add my headshot to a screencast. But if you have already established that relationship with your students and built that connection, and you feel like being that little thumbnail of you being on camera might be a little bit distracting, If you’re perhaps presenting a complicated concept to them in the screencast, then maybe you want to stay off camera so that they can use all of their attention and mental resources to focus on the screencasts itself and not on you. And there’s a benefit to that. I talk a lot about thinking about your instructional goals and meeting your students needs and your needs when you decide what type of video to create.

Rebecca: I like that emphasis on: there’s two audiences here that you need to address: yourself and your own humaness [sic] and time and whatever as well as the student.

Karen: I’m really glad you said that, that ended up becoming a really big theme of the book. I set out to write this book about videos and one of the big themes became faculty success. And I’ve written and talked about this before. We often talk about faculty success only in relation to student success. And faculty are sometimes treated as a means to an end. And I don’t think that works, and I don’t think it’s going to work. I think that we need to talk about faculty success as being worthy in its own right. And I really try to look for, and advocate for, those spaces of mutuality, where both faculty and students are benefiting. I think with our limited time and energy and resources that those are the spaces that we really should be investing our attention to support this work we do in higher education. I’ll bring staff in there as well, all the wonderful staff that work in higher education. We can’t create cultures of care that are only focused on caring for students, [LAUGHTER] and that sacrifice faculty and staff. That’s not what a culture of care is. So, I think it’s really important for faculty to think about, “Yes, this is what I want to teach students and I care about student learning and success, and how is this going to impact me…” and it’s okay to take that into consideration and to look for perhaps a compromise where you’re able to do both.

Rebecca: I really like your emphasis on sustainability as well. One of the things that I’ve done in the past because I teach such a technical area that changes so frequently, is that I had a lot of technical screencast videos that were really helpful to students, they really love that it was me talking to them for all those reasons about having established a relationship and it was familiar. When I screwed up, It was like they liked that, but then they would get out of date so quickly.

Karen: Yeah.

Rebecca: So, I moved away from that for a while, but I’ve actually moved back to doing it again. But, on a much smaller scale that’s more manageable, where it’s something that I think it’s going to last a long time rather than some of the things that are changing or a little more nuanced, or that there’s a lot more conversation that might have to happen around those topics.

Karen: I just had a huge smile on my face as you’re describing that journey and the evolution of your system because that really describes my video [LAUGHTER] creation evolution as well. I had so many videos… just all in with videos, and I set myself up in a way that wasn’t sustainable and then I got a little bit burned out with making them. I had a room in my house with lighting and a screen and every time I wanted to create a video, it became this huge thing. And I had so many videos that they weren’t always reusable, and I didn’t want to do it anymore. I was still making them but my production level just went down pretty drastically. And now, for me, the priorities are making sure students are able to navigate my online courses, [LAUGHTER] because I don’t think we realize how scary that is to go into an online course. We’re in there all the time, we know it like the back of our hand, and for a student who’s new to college or new to online learning to go into an online course, is incredibly overwhelming. So, I always want to have videos that kind of show them around, welcoming them into our classroom, and then building those connections with my students: speaking from the heart, reaching out to say thank you, and to connect with them. And since I’ve gone back to those basics, I’m in a much better place with my system. So, I think we need to talk about sustainability and teaching, not only with videos, but with teaching in general. So, that’s another big theme of the book.

John: I think you had, in one of your videos, a discussion of Powtoons and using similar tools. Am I correct on that?

Karen: Yes. Powtoons are another alternative I talk about. I like to give people options. So, we’re not all going to feel comfortable being on camera, Powtoons are something I discovered a few years ago, and it’s a great website. It’s like a lot of our tech tools. There’s a free version, and a paid version. And with the free version you can create really adorable [LAUGHTER] little videos for your students. Powtoons are animated videos, and they give you a template, so you can just pop in a few different elements. And you can have a little avatar of yourself or you can bring in a picture of yourself. And they’re a great option for faculty who don’t want to be on camera, but still want to create really fun and cool videos for their students. So, a little bit more complicated than creating a screencast, in my experience, but if you are artsy, you’re creative, and that’s something that’s a really important part of your teaching practice, Powtoon’s a great option.

Rebecca: Do you address accessibility at all of your books?

Karen: Yes. Accessibility is something I’m learning a lot about in the past couple of years, making that shift from an accommodations mindset, which was where I think I was, and I think a lot of us were and still are, to a model of accessibility. So, I’m not an expert on it. There’s a lot of great folks out there who are. But, what I know is that I have a lot to learn and that for me, sort of a basic strategy is to add captions to our videos, and to make sure that we’re not just relying on the auto-generated captions that we get in YouTube, which aren’t always accurate, and to make sure that all of our students can access our videos and enjoy our videos. So, there’s a lot of talk about captions in higher education right now. So, they do add some time to your video creation process. What I recommend is that you start where you are, and if you already created videos and you need to go back (I’m doing this myself), start adding captions. And when you create a new video, just take the time. It seems like it’s more time… Once you get the hang of it. It usually takes about, depending on the length of the video, but if you’ve got a five-minute video, it shouldn’t take you more than five or six minutes to add captions, and it’s worth its weight in gold for what it will do for our students. So, start there, and my hope is that we’re going to see some more tools that support faculty in creating accurate captions for their videos. And we’re not quite there yet. It’s still requires some manual labor. But, the important thing is to keep that in mind, and to have that accessibility mindset, and to keep learning. I think we’re all learning every day about accessibility.

REBCCA: The cognitive load is a great reason for a short video, but so is accessibility. [LAUGHTER] …for the captions.

Karen: Yeah, absolutely.

John: For people who are getting started, are there any recommendations you have for either hardware or software?

Karen: I keep it really, really simple. So, I think most of us have a built-in webcam on their computers. And I say go with that. Some folks like to purchase an external webcam that is a little bit better quality. You do not need to do that. You can work with the webcam that’s built into your computer. You used to be able to record videos on your desktop in YouTube and you can’t do that anymore. So, that sort of added an additional layer, I record using a tool called Screencast-O-Matic, which I talk about quite a bit in the book [LAUGHTER], and I hope it’s around for a very long time. It is right now, in my opinion… I’ve tried a bunch of different options… it’s the most intuitive tool that we have. And I record in Screencast-O-Matic. I can record my headshot-type videos, I can record screencasts, or a combination of both. And then right through screencasts, I can upload my videos onto YouTube, and it takes me… for a five-minute video… the entire process takes me about 10 minutes. So, I would absolutely recommend… I use the free version. There is a paid version… I use the free version. I upload into YouTube also free. I do my captions in YouTube. And then I share with my students. The only other thing that I have invested in, which came with my phone, are earbuds and that’s what I use. I used to have a bunch of different microphones, and I just stick with my basic earbuds now and they get the job done. So, I keep it that simple.

Rebecca: And when you keep it that simple. It’s a portable studio.

Karen: Yeah, absolutely.

John: And your smartphone can also make it even more portable when you’re doing something in the field or on-site somewhere,

Karen: Yeah, a lot of folks are using their smartphones and I think that’s fantastic. And I talk a lot about it in the book, I’m kind of embarrassed to say this… I’m always in front of my computer working. So we have kind of a good relationship, my computer and I. [LAUGHTER] But for a lot of folks, they’re going to feel more comfortable on their smartphone. It’s a different energy for me. I don’t know what it is, I feel like I have my professional energy on my computer. And when I do record sometimes on my smartphone that feels like a more personal space for me. So, I don’t feel like my best video creation self when I’m recording on my smartphone. But, I know a lot of folks who do it, and as you said, it can go with you anywhere. So, if you’re out and about in the world and you see a teachable moment that you can share with your students, you can pull it out and record right on the spot. And I should mention through the YouTube app on your phone, you can record, which you can’t do on your desktop. So, for some folks if they don’t want to use Screencast-O-Matic, that would be a really simple option to record through the YouTube app on their phone,

John: Why might including videos be especially important in online classes?

Karen: I guess I just want to emphasize that I think we’re learning more and more about the importance of faculty-student relationships and connections, particularly in the online learning environment. And I would say that we’re talking a lot about online course design, which is fantastic. I am trying to get out there as a voice to talk about online teaching. And I saw on Twitter the other day, someone said, “Well, course design and teaching are two sides of the same coin.” And I think that makes a lot of sense. But I really want to get out there that just designing an excellent course is obviously an important place to start. And we also need to think about how we’re teaching and facilitating those online courses. And for me, it always comes back to relationships and building a positive classroom community. And what I’ve heard from my students over the years is that videos help them to feel connected to me. So, I cannot tell you the number of times in my course evaluations that students will say, “I thought that I was not going to know my online teacher, I thought that I would never see my online teacher, I didn’t know what to expect. And I feel like I really know Karen through the videos that she created for us.” And a lot of them… students are real smart… a lot of the comments will say, “The videos were really helpful for my understanding of course, assignments and learning and I really love that Karen took the time to make them.” So, they see that videos are not only a tool for teaching, but they’re an expression of caring… of my care for them. And I think that really impacts their learning experience. So, I really want to emphasize that relationships, human relationships, are important to online teaching and I hope we’ll continue to focus more on that in the future. And I think videos are going to be a big part of that.

John: When is your book scheduled for release?

Karen: Well, I just submitted the second round of edits and the index and we’re going to be seeing it… Deadlines come and go and shift, but we’ll be seeing it hopefully in early 2020. I’m sure I’ll be updating everyone on the specific date when I have it. [LAUGHTER]

John: And you’ve shared with us a link to a discount code for our listeners. So, we’ll include that in the show notes.

Karen: Awesome. Thank you. Folks can pre-order the book now if they’re interested as well.

Rebecca: We always wrap up by asking: “What’s next?”

Karen: [LAUGHTER] I have to share this. There’s a woman I follow online. She’s an author. She’s an activist. Her name is Glennon Doyle Melton. She wrote a book that was one of Oprah’s selections, so she gains a huge audience through that. And she shared a story online recently. She was interviewed for a podcast, and they asked her that and she said something like, “Well, I’m gonna go pick up my kids from school…” and the interviewer said, “No, I mean, like in your career and your future…” and she said, “Oh, I don’t really think about that. I just think about doing the next best thing.” So, I really love that, [LAUGHTER] because I do try to focus on just doing the next best thing, which for me is wrapping up this term, this semester, in a really positive way. I think my sense is we’re all really sort of feeling it right now. And this is a tough time of year in higher education. And at the same time, I really want to end on a positive note with my students and my faculty, even though I’m tired, and I’m ready to wrap things up. I don’t want that to negatively impact my students or faculty in any way, I just really want to finish strong and honor all the work they’ve done this term. So, I’m focused on taking care of myself and having a positive end to the semester for all parties. This book journey has been pretty wild and it’s been going for a while now. So, I’m really excited to actually see it come out into the world and to share it with faculty and… I love working with higher ed faculty so much and they’re doing such good work in the world. So, I hope that this can be a tool to help them be happier, healthier, and to feel empowered in their work.

Rebecca: I think it will.

John: I’m looking forward to receiving a copy of the book.

Rebecca: I think at the end of the book when it finally is released, then it’s time to have the tea party.

Karen:I will need to do something to celebrate that. [LAUGHTER] I described the process as like, “I’ve never run a marathon, but I imagine writing a book and publishing is like running four marathons.” So, I don’t know where I am in that process, but…

Rebecca: …you just know you’ll be really tired when it’s done. [LAUGHTER]

Karen: Yeah, tired and grateful. Yeah, absolutely.

Rebecca: Well, thanks so much for joining us today.

John: Thank you.

Karen: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

[MUSIC]

John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.