Instructional Video Guidelines

Created by Louis Hougaard (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Mar 29, 2019 by Nate St George


GuidelineDescription and How-To Information
Videos should be co-located along with other instructional content.Embed or provide links to instructional video inline with instructional content. This helps contextualize video content for your students. If you embed the video in your Blackboard , also provide a link to the video so students can copy/paste the link to view the video in a browser.

Chunk your content into specific topics and succinct videos.Ideally, each video will focus on one topic. Chunk content into short videos--the shorter the better (try for under five minutes). If you video is longer than five minutes, can the content be split into two videos? Shorter videos not only allow students easy access to specific video content, these also playback more easily on mobile devices and over slow Internet connections.
Provide a content listing, bookmarks or links to specific content sections in your videos.If you must post a video longer than five minutes, provide a table of contents, links or bookmarks to specific sections within your video.
    • How to: Link to a specific point in a video posted to YouTube by selecting the "Start at" checkbox next to the share link under the "Share" tab. You'll see the link change with the timeline. Simply, select the link at the point in time you want to link to.

    • How to: To link to a specific point in a Classroom Capture video, navigate to the point in the video you want to link to, click the "Share" button and select "Video at current time."
Students engage with video content produced with enthusiastic inflection and slightly faster-than-normal speaking rate.
Students engage more with visually stimulating videos.Try producing your video content using "Khan-style" videos where the speaker is drawing on a tablet as opposed to fixed slides with a lot of text. Your video should "show" something.

While Classroom Capture (lecture capture) videos can provide a review resource for students, these should not be considered as instructional video to be used for primary instruction.If you want to use videos to "flip" your classroom so that students receive information before coming into the classroom, create short videos on specific topics and share these with students before class.

    • Contact your instructional design consultant in the IDEA shop or eCampus Center for online classes to create ways to best utilize video in your class.

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