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In my oceanography lecture class,
I use videos to replace traditional lecture. Students are required to watch my video tutorials
before they come to each week’s class. Embedded in these tutorials are study quizzes that make
them pause the recording periodically, answer questions, and then review the correct answers to
see how they did. There’s also closed captioning which students can turn on or off and which many
students like to have on to help them with the video. Students are encouraged to watch the videos
as many times as they need. They have a worksheet they have to complete prior to each week’s class.
The answers on the worksheet come from the video – they require a variety of levels of thinking about
the material. In class they form groups to review and discuss their answers. During this time,
there’s a lot of noise and animation in the room as students debate and explain and discuss. Also
before each class each week, they are required to take an online quiz based on the video
tutorial and worksheet. The online quiz is open notes and open book. The week’s activities are
then devoted to discussion, Q&A, and in-class activities, often involving concept sketches,
quantitative problem solving, and working with a variety of global and local data sets.
So the goal of my video tutorials is that students enjoy watching them,
learn from them, and can use them as a reference for the class.
I take a typical 2.5-hr lecture in which I might show some short video clips,
demos, and slides and can turn it into a 30-40 minute contained video, which I break into
multiple parts – none of which is longer than 20 minutes – some of which are 5 minutes – all
of which are linked on the class website. What’s my process for creating these videos?
First step is always I write a script. In my scripts, I keep track of my narration
and the types of audio and visual support I want to include while the narration is happening.
Basically I imagine myself standing at the front of a lecture room with everything I need in front
of me, including a pointer -- interacting with a variety of visuals (demos, video, animations, line
drawings, etc.). The script itself is a document with text on the left-hand of the page. The audio
and video requirements go on the right side. I find this technique ends up creating a much more
coherent and interesting story than I would come up with on the fly in the classroom, because it
naturally and thoughtfully comes out as a story as I write. In fact, I’ve often found myself
surprised and excited at the new order and logic I follow as I introduce and describe a process.
To record the audio, I use the free but robust audio editing software called AUDACITY. I use a
SAMSON Studio Condenser microphone that I bought about 10 years ago for $100. While I record,
I watch the wave form in Audacity, and that allows me to monitor my volume. Trial and error
and practice with my specific mic and computer and office space has improved my audio quality. There
are a number of tricks I use to edit my audio, and it is a fairly lengthy process, but worth
the effort. (I recommend you play around with this step and consult online resources to help.)
As you can see, I record my audio in my office at home, right next to the computer. When I’m done,
I export the audio as a .wav file and import it into my video editing software. Right now that’s
Camtasia Studio. So here’s an example of starting a new video by laying down the audio track. That
tells me my timeline and governs my trajectory. Next I begin gathering all my video and pictures
and laying them out on the timeline. I’ll add arrows, text labels, and animations
where they are useful. I will also add video or sound effects when they add value to the story or
to signal the start or end of a segment or as background during an interlude.
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My second to last step before publishing is to add quiz questions for students to answer while
watching the videos. I put these questions in spots in the story where I think students might
experience cognitive overload. It forces them to stop and think before moving onward. My last step
is to add captioning for the hearing impaired. Because I have a script, it’s pretty easy. I just
copy and paste my script text into the captioning area of Camtasia, and then as the video plays,
I hit a button after every 3 lines of caption text to coordinate the script with my voice.
When I’m done with the video, I publish it as a .mp4 file and then I upload it to my college
server, where it’s linked to my web page. And finally, I go back to these videos and
edit them again each semester before students see them to fix errors and improve their quality. When
I first started making videos, this entire process could take close to 100 hours for one week’s worth
of material. But I’ve definitely gotten faster. For example, this video you’re watching now
– 5 minutes long – took me about 6 hours to make.
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