Videos

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Educational videos can be used in many ways to help teach online classes and conventional in person classes.  These types of videos can help promote learning in many different ways, but here are several. 

The first way they can benefit students is Mayer would say “promote active cognitive processes in students”.  This means that if the videos are tailored to the students correctly that they may have higher brain function that promotes learning.  This may even happen while students appear to be not learning.  If the videos are not tailored to the students correctly this will not happen.  For example: when I was in high school physics we would watch videos of Julius Sumner Miller. Julius’s videos were about physics; mostly basic physics and showed how the different theories worked.  While for myself, I enjoyed these videos.  I watched them with great intent and took something away from probably every video.  But in 2005 and with Julius being dead for 17 years (longer than many of the in the class students had been alive for yet) it wasn’t correctly tailored to the students (I was an anomaly), so promoting active cognitive processes in students it probably didn’t accomplish.

Silverman talks about multiple learning styles; this means that there are multiple learning styles.  Those styles are visual-spatial, auditory-sequential and tactile-kinesthetic.  Using videos allow us to hit multiple learning styles at once like audio and visual learners.  This allows those learners to learn using the best system they can.  Kozma found that if we use videos with spoken language, text, still images, and moving images the highest learning gains can occur using this media. 

Videos can also motivate students to learn. Motivating anyone to learn can be one of the hardest jobs of an instructor, because not everyone has the motivation to want to get praise or good grades.  Videos can be used to motivate students in several ways.  The way I have seen it used and the outcome can be very iffy. Is for an instructor to say “We learn this _____.  We can watch _______ video.”.  Whether or not the video has something to do with learning.  Students will normally push through whatever they are being taught, so they can get to that reward (the video).  Because of this push little to no learning can take place.  Videos can motivate learning by stimulating the learner.  This normally happens by taking something they like (a cartoon character) and putting it in a situation where it teaches something.  Sesame Street is a great example of this.  We take characters kids love and use them to teach letters, numbers, and life lessons. 

Visual media also stimulates a different portion of the brain, then let say just a book.  This can influence memory and can also influence cognitive learning.  Lets go back to my formative years.  In junior high, we watched the mini series Roots.  Doing this brought out emotional responses in the students on how slaves were treated.  These emotional responses have the ability to relay experiences and influence cognitive learning (Noble, 1983).

Lastly videos can take us places we normally wouldn’t be able to see/ learn from.  If we are talking about the Romans, students can view videos on the colosseum.  This shows them not only the place itself, but how things were built, how people lived, and the geography.  These can help push a lesson home or be a great Segway into a new lesson.  They help get the student’s attention.  This specific type could be replace with VR.

All in all videos are a great tool for the classroom. But we need to remember to use them correctly and not over use them.  Because too much of a good thing does hurt.