When using video to teach, how do you
know if your viewer actually learned
what you wanted them to learn?
I mean, how do you know if you're
learning video was effective?
Well, if you make your learning videos
using Camtasia you can find out.
Camtasia is a popular screen-capture and
video-editing application. Along with
capturing and editing video, Camtasia
gives you the ability to test your
viewer's knowledge of the material. And it
does this by allowing you to embed
quizzes into your video. But there's way
more to Camtasia's quiz feature than just
being able to ask your viewer a bunch of
questions. With the right thinking and a
few tweaks, you can turn a standard
Camtasia quiz into an engaging, effective,
and interactive learning experience.
To show you what I mean we need to take a
quick look at Camtasia's quiz feature.
So, here we are in Camtasia's editing
interface. This is Camtasia 9 for Windows,
by the way. Let me just give you a brief lay
of the land, here. This big window is the
'Canvas.' It shows a preview of what your
finished video will look like to your
viewer. Now, below the Canvas is the
'Timeline.' If you're familiar with other
video-editing applications like iMovie
or Adobe Premiere Pro this will look
familiar.
The timeline is where you build your
final video, by arranging and connecting
individual pieces of media. Above the
timeline, and to the left of the canvas is
the 'Media Bin' and 'Library' panels. This is
where you store and access different
media assets, like video clips, graphics
or music tracks, to add to your project
in the timeline. But what we're
interested in is to the left of the
media bin, here in this menu panel. And
that is the 'Interactivity' menu item.
Select 'Add Quiz to Timeline' and the
interface changes a little bit.
A quiz track appears above the timeline,
and to the right of the canvas, the
'Properties Panel' opens up revealing two
tabs. You also get this quiz placeholder
graphic in the canvas window, which
represents this little green label on
the timeline, which is your quiz. You can
click and drag this label along the
timeline to wherever you want your quiz
to appear in your video. You can have
multiple quizzes in your video. If you
just run your mouse along the quiz
track you'll see this green 'plus' symbol.
Click the symbol to add another quiz to
your video at that particular spot.
Now, to actually create our quiz questions
and answers and all that stuff we need
to go over, here, to these two tabs in the
properties inspector. The first tab is
the 'Quiz Options.' Here, you can set the
name of the quiz, whether or not
viewers can see their results, and
whether or not the quiz will be scored.
There's also a button where you can preview
what your selected quiz is going to
look like. That's kind of handy. The '?' tab is
where you add the actual questions to
your quiz.There are four question types
to choose from.There's 'Multiple Choice,'
'Fill-in-the-Blank,' 'Short Answer,' and
'True/False.' This field is where you type
in your quiz question and below that is
where you input the answers and
determine which one is correct.
Pretty standard stuff, right? So, where is
this amazing interactivity I was talking
about at the beginning of this video?
Well, the magic happens when you select
this little 'Display Feedback' option.
This opens up some additional fields
where you can provide feedback depending
on if your viewer got the question
correct or incorrect. You can type a
message in this field if the viewer
answer correctly, and a separate message
in this field if they answered
incorrectly.
But it's these two options labeled
'Action' that contain the real power. The
'Action' drop-down contains four options.
The default option is 'Continue.' And this
basically means the viewer can continue
to the next section of video right after
the quiz. If we hit the drop-down, we get
some more options. We have 'Go To URL,'
which takes the viewer to an external
website address. You have 'Jumped To Time,'
which takes the viewer to a different
section of the video based on these
timecode numbers, here, on the timeline.
And 'Jump To Marker,' which takes the viewer to
a section of the timeline that is
labeled with a marker. You can also place
markers on individual clips of media in
your timeline. And you can select which
action to take,
separately, for both correct and
incorrect answers, sending your viewer to
a different scene, or section of video
depending on their choice.
Do you see the power of this? You can do
way more than just tell the viewer
whether or not they got the answer
correct or incorrect. With this
functionality you can actually create
meaningful consequences for the choices
that the viewer makes, by having your
video branch off to other sections of
video on the timeline, or other videos on
other web pages. Now, before you get too
excited there's something I should
mention. In order to use Camtasia's
interactive features, your video project
needs to be hosted on a web server. Which
means, you can't just export an mp4 video
file and put it on YouTube or Vimeo and
expect all of that interactivity to work.
Because it won't.
There are a bunch of additional files
required to make the interactivity work,
and those files need to be hosted on a
web server. Either your server,
Amazon s3, or Screencast.com,
which is operated by Techsmith, the
makers of Camtasia. Exporting an
interactive video out of Camtasia and
uploading it to a web server is a fairly
straightforward process, and a small
price to pay for not having to code all
of that interactivity, yourself. Camtasia
has it built in, which is why Camtasia
is one of my favorite tools for creating
outstanding video learning. If you want
to know the other tools that I suggest
for creating low-cost, high-quality
learning videos, download my
Video Learning Toolkit Resource List.
you can grab that right now by hitting the link
on the screen, or in the description, below.
You'll find some great tools on that list.
Thanks for watching. And I'll
see you next time.