Pedagogy and Practice
Attending to Cognitive Capacity in Videos
The availability of screen recording tools like, Kaltura Capture, a tool available to the entire Minnesota State community, has made it extremely easy for anyone to record their screen as they narrate. As such, videos have become a popular way to deliver instruction to students. Media outlets [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] that cover education are filled with stories that suggest that practices like flipped classrooms and massive open online courses (MOOCs) along with services like Khan Academy, LinkedIn Learning, and YouTube create the impression that these prepared instructional videos are somehow inherently better for student learning.
Don’t be misled to believe that instruction delivered via video is inherently better than instruction delivered in person.  It is not the media (video) used to deliver instruction that influences student learning, it is how you have designed your instruction within these videos that can influence student learning.
As many of our colleagues are considering creating instructional videos to support learning from a distance, this month’s Pedagogy and Practice provides guidance for creating videos that attend to the limited cognitive capacity we all have when trying to learn something.
We’ve spared you from reading entire textbooks on how people learn, instructional design, and multimedia learning (although if you’d like some good resources you can find them in our links).  Instead, we have summarized some principles shared by cognitive psychologist, Richard Mayer, that can guide you as you create videos to deliver instruction to your students.
Like what you see? If you want an opportunity to build skills in preparing instructional videos, join one of two upcoming short courses titled Aligning Instructional Strategies with Kaltura MediaSpace starting on August 24 or September 28.
NED Event Highlight
Fall 2020 NED Short Course, Long Course, and Learning Community Opportunities
This month we highlight our newly published list of the NED short course, long course, and learning community opportunities available for Fall 2020. This includes 15 short course opportunities, 4 QM sponsored workshops, a learning community on culturally responsive pedagogy, and a semester-long course called, Foundations of Teaching Online (FOTO).
A list of webinars being offered this fall will be available in the coming weeks, visit www.asanewsletter.org/events/ to find the most up-to-date NED events.
Academic Technology Tips
Heating Up Your Pre-Recorded Videos
One role of an instructor is to help guide students through course content. In synchronous delivery, the students have the opportunity to ask questions in real-time. The immediate feedback can help students quickly catch up if they fall behind. There are ways to anticipate this type of navigational support in online or asynchronous delivery methods as well. Even with the ability to pause and rewind content, incorporating convenient hotspots can help motivate additional learners to access supplemental content in an asynchronous setting. Kaltura MediaSpace allows for integrated hotspots to help support and engage the learners who are working with pre-recorded videos.
Hotspots can be used to add hyperlinks that are displayed when you want on your video content.
This interactive element can allow for quick navigation to supplemental material including access to other videos. Viewers can also click on the hotspot to quickly jump forward or backward to a specific point in the current video.
Creating opportunities for personalized learning paths can be a powerful method of guiding the learner through content that is relevant to them personally and can create branching scenarios that offer just-in-time learning for deeper explorations of specific topics.
When planning to use hotspots, you may want to storyboard your content first to visualize the path you want learners to take as they navigate through the topic.
It is also important to make sure you have incorporated some time for reflection in the videos to leverage the retrieval practice that research has shown to be an effective part of storing information into long-term memory.
Initiatives Update
Learn more about Previously Funded Innovation Projects in the New Innovation Gallery
Minnesota State Educational Innovations has awarded faculty and staff from around the state funding to bring their innovative ideas to life through Innovation Funding grants (large seed, small seed, or sustaining, and Pay It Forward).
Now you can view all of these projects in the new Innovation Gallery. The gallery features over 70 innovation projects that have been funded since 2016.
Share Your Voice
We’ve Implemented Your Feedback!
Thanks to the colleagues who participated in opportunities this summer and provided feedback. Thanks to your feedback we’ve made the following changes to what you’ll see this fall:
Webinars
- Resources and recordings – All sessions will be available on the NED Resource site on the Event Resources page.
- Aligning Participant Expectations – Participants will be reminded that webinars are primarily designed to provide information and examples of the topic being shared, but the format doesn’t always allow enough time for participants to practice concepts outlined in the webinars. Participants desiring more interaction are encourage to join the corresponding short course.
Short Courses
- Feedback – Affirm the expectation that facilitators provide feedback on participants’ submitted course
- Equity and Inclusion – Facilitators will provide explicit connections to how course topics can advance efforts to make our courses more inclusive and equitable.
- Opportunities to Connect – Facilitators will host optional online synchronous web conference meetings to provide participants with an opportunity to connect with one another.
- Course Overview Videos – Facilitators will create a “course overview video” that will be available on each short course registration page to provide interested participants more information about what to expect in the course and of the facilitator of the course, prior to signing up.
Additional Feedback
In addition to the available three-week short course, we recognized the need to establish a long-term (semester long) learning community for those participants that wish to explore, practice, and reflect on culturally responsive pedagogy in their courses.
We have positive feedback from participants that participated in the Foundations of Technology Online course this summer and recognize the desire and demand to make this opportunity available during the academic year. We made it happen!
Upcoming Events
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