Video: A Missed Opportunity?

Online instructors who use little or no video in their online courses may be missing a tremendous opportunity to increase student engagement. These instructors would be wise to take note of the vast amounts of time that many Americans spend watching television each month. According to a 2009 report by Nielsens, the average American spends more than 151 hours per month viewing different television programs. These small-screen enthusiasts may spend numerous hours in front of the TV for any number of reasons. One category of TV viewer includes the TV buffs who seek the entertainment value of TV in the form of action, drama, adventure, or comedy. These individuals seek shows that touch the heart or appeal to the senses. Other fans of the tube prefer to watch current news developments at home and abroad. Being informed about different happenings around the world represents an impetus for thought and conversation for these individuals. A third category of TV viewer may watch TV shows for news and entertainment for similar reasons. Regardless of the reason that many Americans are spending a significant amount of time watching the tube, the emotional impact of TV cannot be ignored.

This point is best illustrated by the video generated during the Civil Rights Movement. Many Baby Boomers probably recall television coverage of the Civil Right Movement where video-generated images fueled the emotions of people at home and abroad. Some scholars have suggested that the use of video may have led to the success of the Civil Rights Movement. This assertion might be debatable, but the impact of video on individual affect is widely accepted.

Online instructors may be able to benefit from affect-driven uses of video in their courses. Websites such as You Tube and Meta Café allow online instructors to embed such powerful, engaging content into their courses. Video that appeal to the emotions of students can be useful in maintaining the interest of students who are not easily engaged with text-based content. Such video would also likely trigger rich student discussions.

Multi-sensory approaches

Occasionally a conversation comes up in an online course that resonates with new "cool" ways of expressing content on the web. One such conversation started with this question: "Do you feel that ESL (English as a Second Language)students would find the online environment more or less difficult than face-to-face instruction?"

That's a challenging question. Before I took a stab at answering, I reflected back on how Spanish was taught in a distance learning course that relied on television. Back in the eighties and nineties, a course called "Destinos" taught Spanish through "immersion," using a television soap-opera style called a "novella" to immerse learners in la lengua. The course lasted nearly a year and was supported by a vast variety of worksheets, exercises, and assessment tools.

Such a course as Destinos used a mix of media to achieve positive learning outcomes, and I believe the same answer holds true today. I responded that the success of an online course for ESL instruction depended a lot on the design of the content and follow-up activities:

"... I do believe that the content must engage the learner in some way. You gotta hook the fish with tempting bait. What could an ESL teacher do to engage the student?...

I think the instructor would be well served to consult media, or even create media, to enhance the course's ability to engage the student. One could use a webcam and microphone to record short (45 seconds or less) video clips (Windows Movie Maker), and post them to YouTube; then, link those clips to course content-- very possible and feasible to do.

One could also import those video clips to a Powerpoint using Adobe Presenter tools, and publish them to the Adobe Connect server, then link those clips to the Blackboard course as content.

How much does it cost to do all this? Nothing to the USF instructor. The Adobe Presenter and Windows Movie Maker tools are free."

And that's the crux of this post: The tools for designing instructional content that engage the senses (seeing, hearing, and through well-designed exercises: doing), are freely available to USF instructors, with support from your friendly neighborhood instructional designer at CID.

And the learning curve is not as steep as you might imagine. Not in my opinion, anyway.

-- Glen Gummess

Lights, Camera, ACTION!

Ahhh, it’s summer. There is nothing better than kicking back, relaxing and taking in a movie. But how do you watch movies? The theater is always an option, but with ticket prices skyrocketing along with gas, a more fiscally responsible alternative is to stay in the comfort of your own home and enjoy from your couch. But there are so many different ways to access movies, where do you begin? Things certainly have changed in the past 20 years or so. It used to be the only ways to watch a movie was to either view it on “free” T.V. or go to the video store and rent a tape. We’ve come a long way, baby.

Now you can order your movie online through a subscription service, go to a “box” at the drug-store and have a dvd dispensed for you. Perhaps you would rather view from your computer? So many alternatives, and yet only so much summer. View the movie viewing options that PC WORLD thinks may work best for you. While you do that, I’ll go get the popcorn…

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A Novel Approach to Training Support

Training support for course management systems such as Blackboard has evolved very little over the past decade. Although contemporary training solutions provide users support in the form of text-based documentation, animations, and narrated presentations, text-based training solutions remain the primary form of training support. These solutions limit training support to the user's interpretations of a given set of instructions. Interpreting instructions in this way is a useful approach to training but may not be the most effective way to train users to use course management systems. Software vendors might consider a performance support solution where users are provided assistance in performing routine tasks. Software such as the wizard in Microsoft Office has long supported users in the performance of common tasks. The user's efforts are generative as opposed to interpretative as in the case of text-based solutions. This approach enables users to use time efficiently and improves upon past training approaches.