10 Tips for Creating Effective Instructional Videos

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This post first appeared on Faculty Focus.

Instructor presence is an important component of effective online teaching, and video can help make it happen. Instructional videos have become increasingly easy to create and can turn a good online class into an engaging learning experience. Video humanizes the online experience by letting students know their instructor as a real person, not an abstraction. Good quality webcams are available for less than $100, and there are numerous free and easy-to-use resources for creating and publishing video content so it can be streamed back into our courses.

Staring into a webcam and pressing the record button can be intimidating for some of us–after all, we’re teachers, not TV personalities–but it’s actually easier than you might think. Here are 10 tips that will soon have you broadcasting like a pro.

Forget the headset. If your computer doesn’t have a built-in camera and microphone, buy a webcam that does both. Webcam sound quality is almost as good as a headset’s, and it lets you be “you” without the Mickey Mouse ears.
Keep it short. Students have been raised on YouTube. Try to keep your videos brief. Few students will sit through videos where the instructor drones on and on. If you have a lot to say (and sometimes we do!), chunk up the message. Make a video mini-series with 5-10 minute chapters.
Prepare well and then wing it. Some people like to start out with a script, but this can feel artificial. Sometimes a brief outline taped next to your webcam is all you need to stay on track without sounding like you’re reading from your notes. However, if the video is only five minutes or so, you might just re-record until you get it right—not necessarily “perfect.”
Position the camera above your eyes, so you look slightly up at it. Avoid looking down at the camera. Your audience does not want to look up your nose. If you’re using a laptop, put a stack of books under it so you raise the camera. Position your head to appear at the top third of the screen so the recording includes your face and most of your torso.
Location, location, location. Your work or home office are usually safe choices as a background for the recording. Outdoors can be a nice change. Try putting your back to a neutral wall with the light source in front. Avoid sitting in front of a window, as the glare will make you appear as if you’re in a witness protection program. And this should be obvious but it needs to be said: don’t record with your bed, pajamas, laundry, or bathroom in the background.
Move it out. Don’t always shoot your videos from the same spot. Your audience will tire of seeing the same background. Start with your office, but also consider a quiet place on the campus quad or maybe your kitchen or backyard. Keep the backgrounds neutral but varied. Your audience will appreciate it.
Look right at the camera lens. Looking anywhere else looks weird. Your audience will think you have an avoidance problem.
Cover your screen. Once you get everything ready, consider taping a piece of paper over your computer screen so you’re not distracted by seeing yourself while you record. Remember, you do not need to be perfect! Try not to be overly critical of yourself.
Say “cheese.” Smiling helps everything. Whether you’re recording a webcast of your face or just your voice, smiling makes you look and sound better.
Avoid over doing it. The wacky music, goofy fade-ins, and spinning transitions that come with some video editing software can make home-videos look corny. Leave most of those tools for the professionals (who don’t really use them either).

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A well-constructed assessment is designed to provide learners the opportunity to reach an outcome that is measurable and specific. Assessments will include a descriptive grading criteria that is communicated to learners. A rubric is an indispensable tool used to describe grading criteria and accurately measure learners’ progress towards accomplishment of a specific outcome. Canvas provides a robust, flexible rubric creation tool that can be linked to any assignment created in Canvas.

In the brief video below, Mike Smedshammer takes you on a brief tour of his online class to show you what a rubric looks like in Canvas and explain why he integrates them his assessments.

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In order to ensure that students are confident that they are completing assignments correctly, it is important that the instructions explain the assignment as clearly as possible. The more precise and clear the instructions, the better students are able to focus their attention on achieving the assessment’s outcome, improving learning and easing anxiety.

In the brief video below, Mike Smedshammer provides a brief tour of one of his online courses that demonstrates the use of clear and effective instructions for an assessment.

In this @ONE Canvas Q&A, you will be introduced to the Canvas Homepage feature and identify effective strategies for choosing one that supports the success of your online students.

As a California community college instructor, you are committed to serving the needs of an extremely diverse student population. Many of the students in your online classes are first-generation college students and from underrepresented minority groups. These underserved groups are more likely to work full-time and manage complex family responsibilities while completing their college degrees. Being aware of the complex challenges your students are juggling can be difficult, especially in online classes. But this awareness is essential to your ability to support them.

As you design the "Getting Started" area of your online course, consider including a link to a confidential Student Information Form. This is a practice I have used in my own online classes with great success. The form provides me with data about my students, enabling me to identify those who will benefit most from my high-touch interactions. The concept is simple:

Create an online form. You may use a Canvas survey, a Google form, or another survey instrument of your choice.
Develop a few demographic questions that will help you identify who your high opportunity students are. They need to know you care about their learning and will be there to support them.
Ask open-ended questions to identify who is feeling anxious or confused. One of my favorite questions to ask is, "In one word, describe how you are feeling about this class." You can quickly scan the answers and identify which students would benefit most from a personalized, reassuring email from you -- or maybe a friendly video message!
Also, if you plan to leave video or voice feedback in the Canvas grade book (a great strategy that is known to improve how students respond to your feedback), let students know and give them the option to opt out. Students may have reasons, like a disability, that make written feedback a better option for them.

Below is a sample Google Form I have used in my online classes. Feel free to adapt it for your own class! Open the sample form in a new window.

Relationships are key to fostering culturally responsive online teaching practices that support the success of our diverse student population in the California Community College system. This is especially true for Latinx students, whose concept of educación is predicated on such a relationship. Relationships are founded on trust and that can be difficult to establish in an online class, especially when students experience self-doubt about whether they have what it takes to succeed in a college class.

The Wisdom Wall is a practice that helps to reduce student anxiety at the start of an online class and build a foundation of trust upon which meaningful relationships are more likely to develop. Online instructors should take a variety of approaches to ensure students feel welcome at the start of a class and leveraging the power of student voices in this effort is especially powerful. When students hear messages about your class from their peers, they're more likely to be convinced by them. This is why the Wisdom Wall is such a powerful community-building practice. The concept is simple.

At the end of an online course:
- Reflect back: Ask your students to reflect on their semester-long experience. Encourage them to think back to how they felt that first week as they were getting oriented to the course, their new instructor, and their peers. How did they feel? And how did things change over time? What helped them succeed? What do they know now that they wish they had known then?
- Share forward: Provide a place for student to share these reflections. Make it clear to them that their audience is not you, but your future online students. The tool you use to create the place to share can be as simple as a Canvas Page that students are granted edit access to or a Google Doc. For extra community-building power, use a tool that invites students to comment in video or voice: like Flipgrid or VoiceThread. When students can hear each others' inflection and emotion, messages resonate on a deeper level. Voice and video also helps our students because it allows them to see and hear other students that are like them. This common bond helps student feel that they do belong and they can succeed! If you use a voice or video tool, these comments will need to be captioned or transcribed.
At the start of an online course:
- Share: Give your incoming students access to the comments from your past students. Include this in your Getting Started module/area of your course. Make it one of their first assignment for them to complete so they feel a sense of connection and empowerment right off the bat!
- Reflect: In a discussion forum or other student-student interaction tool, ask students to discuss on one thing from the Wisdom Wall that helped them feel more comfortable and why.
Bonus! Not only will the Wisdom Wall support your students' successful start to your online class, but you will also learn a great deal about your students' experiences and how they experience your online class!

Here is an excerpt of one of my past Wisdom Walls (designed with VoiceThread):

Have you used the Wisdom Wall in your online class? Please leave a comment below to share your experiences or tips for modifying this practice. Thanks for sharing.

From the first moment a student accesses your course, the tone is set. Your course homepage, syllabus and other "getting started" materials play key roles in the how your students begin to relate to their experience in your online class. Setting an inviting and supportive tone is especially important in supporting the success of our first-generation college students and other underserved groups, who are more likely to feel self-doubt and exhibit engagement apprehension in academic environments. Including a set of Community Ground Rules in your course syllabus is a great way to communicate that your students will be valued participants in a learning community and articulate what that means.

Below is a set of sample Community Ground Rules I have used in my online classes. They are included in my book, Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies, and I have shared them in the Public Domain, which means you are free to re-use and adapt them in your own class without permission or attribution. Do you have modifications to share? Please share your ideas in a comment at the bottom of the page!

Sample Community Ground Rules

A community is a group of individuals who work together to support a common goal or interest. In this online class, we work together to support the successful achievement of our learning outcomes. In an effort to ensure our community develops, thrives and sustains throughout our time together, the following ground rules will be in effect at all times.

Treat contributions made by other members of the class with respect.
Reach out and help when you see the need. And ask for help when you need it.
Have patience and a sense of humor with technology. There will be hiccups, expect them.
Keep an open mind. If you’re feeling reluctant, that’s ok. Take it one step at a time and look at this as an opportunity to learn something new.
Contribute regularly to collaborative activities to ensure other members of the community have ample opportunity to read/listen, reflect, and respond to your ideas.
Respect the diverse opinions and viewpoints of each member of our community. Differences allow us to learn and grow together.
Understand that communications shared through text have a higher likelihood of being misinterpreted than the spoken word. Therefore, when you type a thought or a comment, read it carefully before you submit it. If you question the way it is worded, read it out loud to yourself. If you still question the way it’s phrased, rewrite it.
Contribute regularly to group dialogue, including blog posts and replies. The contributions of each individual play a role in the collective strength and diversity of our community.
Members of our community are restricted to enrolled members of our class, in an effort to maintain a safe, trustworthy discussion environment. [If students will be engaging in interactions in the public web, note those activities here (and in other parts of your course where those activities are explained) to ensure they know who their audience is before they contribute. Learning to share appropriately in the public web is an important component of developing of digital citizenship and it’s your job to ensure students are clear about who has access to their work.]
All image and video content shared within this community will reflect acceptable academic standards. You are expected to use discretion and, if asked, you will be expected to demonstrate how your content supports the theme of our community: “[enter a description of the community’s theme here].”
Any community member has the ability to create a new discussion forum in our course. However, the individual who creates the forum immediately takes on the responsibility of moderating it. This means you have committed to regularly responding to new comments and greeting new members of the forum.
If, at any time, you feel that any of these ground rules have been violated by a member of our community, you are encouraged to bring your concern directly and immediately to [enter your name], our community leader. Clearly identify which ground rule has been violated and include specific evidence of the violation in your email. Your concerns will be addressed promptly with careful consideration in an individualized manner.

These Sample Community Ground Rules by Michelle Pacansky-Brock are shared in the Public Domain and may be re-used and adapted without permission or attribution.

In this @ONE Canvas Q&A, you will learn how to use the handy Canvas Scheduler tool to set up convenient appointment slots on your course calendar that students can sign up for in a click! The scheduler is the perfect solution for arranging times to meet with your students and can be configured across multiple courses our just one. It's a huge time saver and makes scheduling time to meet with your students a breeze.

In this @ONE webinar archive,Michelle Pacansky-Brock examines why humanized online learning is critical to closing equity gaps in the California Community College system. Michelle discusses how faculty can cultivate presence, empathy, and awareness to achieve humanized online facilitation.

View the goody bag (it's packed with loads of humanizing resources!)

In this @ONE webinar archive, Fabiola Torres, Ethnic Studies Instructor at Glendale Community College, asks, "We all need a nudge sometimes, right?" Nudges are an important part of supporting the success of our online students. And when you use video to infuse your nudges with your human presence, students are more likely to trust you and less likely to drop your class. Fabiola will demonstrate why it’s important not be perfect, but to be human!

In this @ONE webinar, Anita Crawley, of the CA Online Education Initiative, and Katie Winter, from SmarterServices, examines data from the July 2017 Quest Program Review survey conducted by the RP group. The data indicates that online faculty members are playing a key role in connecting students to the Quest program. Those connections are made prior to the beginning of the term through email and during the early days of the term through a link in their academic courses. Quest materials are being used during the first week of the term as part of an orientation to online learning and throughout the term on an as needed basis. During this first session we will review the Quest resources with an emphasis on how SmarterMeasure results can be used to improve online success and provide Quest assignments that faculty have used.