You Should Be Using Instructional Videos, and You Can Start Today
In my experience as a teacher mentor, there are three primary reasons that teachers are apprehensive about instructional videos, but each of them, I think, can be addressed by reframing the idea of what instructional videos are and shifting the mindset we bring to the process of creating them, which tends to focus on technical skills (editing, recording, etc) rather than pedagogy.
... and, we're back!
After a summer hiatus, I'm back in the saddle and ready to go here on Learning to Teach. The YAMM/Mail Merge tutorial is coming along (I promise), and I have tons of new ideas and topics I'll be exploring here on the blog. I'm also, like many teachers, back in a school building for the first time in nearly two years, and as I ponder the vast uncertainty that shrouds nearly everything about this coming year, I'm finding a surprising amount of comfort in one of particular teaching strategy that I have been honing over the past two years: instructional videos.
Instructional videos have many, many benefits for teachers and students, but as I've discussed on multiple episodes of the Modern Classrooms Podcast, they truly proved their worth to me in March of 2020 when school suddenly shut down, and we abruptly (and with almost no preparation) shifted into distance learning. For those of us using instructional videos, this transition was significantly smoother (though not entirely without challenges, of course) because we did not have to change our instructional routines at all - we were under much less pressure to learn to teach over Zoom, and students already knew how to access and learn from our video lessons. And I, like many other teachers, underwent further transitions as well - back into the building, back into remote, and then into hybrid, and so on - all of which were made simpler by the fact that my instructional modality did not change. Instructional videos were a constant in a sea of shifting practices - I'm comforted knowing that one of the most basic and essential elements of my teaching practice is robust and can withstand nearly any curveball that may find its way to the plate this year.
For those even remotely familiar with the Modern Classrooms Project, the notion of instructional videos should be a very familiar one; they in fact comprise the bulk of one of MCP's three foundational pillars, which is blended learning (the other two being student self-pacing and mastery-based assessment). However, after a summer of mentoring nearly 40 new Modern Classrooms educators, I know that there is quite a lot of apprehension around the idea of building (specifically recording and editing) instructional videos, and rolling them out.
I'm here to tell you: you can create an instructional video, and you can do it today.
In the first place, I have personally seen even the most reluctant, tech-hesitant teachers build high-quality instructional videos, so I know it can be done. More specifically, though, in my experience as a teacher mentor, there are three primary reasons that teachers are apprehensive about instructional videos, but each of them, I think, can be addressed by reframing the idea of what instructional videos are and shifting the mindset we bring to the process of creating them, which tends to focus on technical skills (editing, recording, etc) rather than pedagogy.
Apprehension #1: "It will take too long to plan, rehearse, record, and edit"
In fact, it should not take you any longer to plan and build your instructional video than it does a traditional lesson. Many people think that building an instructional video requires slick transitions, snappy editing, and recording over and over until you get a perfect take. We tend to become perniciously perfectionist with ourselves when we record our voices and faces, and we find ourselves wanting to produce a pristine specimen - but we can't possibly hold ourselves to these standards when we're live. Consider, the experience of a student when you deliver a live lecture - they'll hear you say "um" and "ah" countless times; you'll likely be interrupted; you'll likely make mistakes and have to correct yourself, and so on. Delivering a lecture to a group of 25 pre-teens is significantly harder than creating an instructional video, and if you can do that and make it engaging, your videos, with the same content and with fewer interruptions, will do just as good a job.
This comparison is a useful one, I think, because some teachers may forego instructional videos, and all of the benefits they bring, out of concern over the fact that the video might not come out "perfectly." However, the alternative of reverting to traditional lectures doesn't result in "perfect" instructional delivery either, so we needn't hold ourselves to that standard - a simple instructional video recorded in a single take will suffice. We don't need to be professional videographers or produce professionally polished videos, and our students' learning will not be hindered by little mistakes or imperfections that would have happened in a live lecture anyway.
Apprehension #2: "I Don't Know How to Edit Video and I'm Bad at Tech"
A lot of teachers shy away from using instructional videos specifically because they're worried about the tech. While there certainly are some very complex and technically advanced video production applications out there, there are also some very, very simple ones (remember, we're not producing professional video here - perfection and polish aren't the goals, instruction is).
Screencastify has done some incredible work to become more accessible to teachers who just want to screen record quickly (Screencast-o-Matic is also very popular). Many of us are now familiar with virtual meeting platforms that allow for screensharing and recording (I developed this tutorial for Modern Classrooms on using Zoom to record instructional videos, but Hangouts and Teams also allow for screensharing and recording). You can even use your phone to record video (if you can deliver the lecture live to students, you can deliver it to your phone as well). Video production tech is only a barrier if you want to produce polished, professional videos - but again, that's not our goal.
Apprehension #3: Kids will always be on screens and I'll sacrifice the community I build in whole-group instruction"
Some teachers are concerned about the pedagogical shift from live instruction to asynchronous instructional videos. However, as I often remind teachers whom I mentor, instructional videos are only one of the many tools we can use to facilitate learning; we are still in control of how we run our classes, and making one or two instructional videos doesn't mean transitioning every aspect of your class into a virtual experience. Additionally, even if every lesson is taught via instructional video, this doesn't mean that we can't also conduct full-group activities, like critiques, socratic seminars, labs, etc.), nor that we make any changes to the tasks, activities, and other classwork we normally assign.
Also, and perhaps even more crucially, delivering brilliant lectures to silent, compliant students isn't (and shouldn't be) our primary job - content instruction is one of many jobs, and using instructional videos opens up opportunities to build relationships, spend quality time in small-groups or working 1-on-1 supporting students, and facilitate self-pacing. We've all been advised (and I believe we all aspire) not to be the "sage on the stage," and instructional videos quite literally allow us to step down from the stage and support students in a more tailored and flexible way.
In a school year as uncertain as this one, I can't think of a better time for teachers to give instructional videos a try - but even putting aside the need to teach hybrid classes and the unsavory yet certainly possible return to remote learning, instructional videos allow us to streamline our content delivery and spend more time having meaningful interactions with our students - ultimately becoming the guide on the side we've always wanted to be.