Creating Instructional Videos for the Classroom - Best Practices for Video Creation

In this section, you will be reading articles and watching videos to learn more about the best practices for video creation. Video creation can be quite easy depending on your skills, but it is another thing to create a video that is meaningful, instructional, and possibly even provides personalized feedback. 

STEPS:

1. This article "7 Video Marketing Best Practices" is meant for the business world but still has excellent advice when creating an instructional video. When you read the article, what stands out is:

• You should start with a goal in mind - What content will you be teaching?
• Know your audience - Do you want to target your current students or use this with current/future students? 
• Create interesting content - Sometimes the content might not be considered fun but how can you make it engaging?
• Hook your audience - What can you use to hook the students so they continue watching the video?

2. Next, read this article from Edutopia "A 5-Step Guide to Making Your Own Instructional Videos".

This quote from the article sums it up, “Learning to create a high-quality instructional video doesn’t happen overnight—it requires continual trial, error, and innovation.”

The Five Steps from the article are:

• Chunking Video - Make your videos short and sweet! In the article, they suggested between six and nine minutes but research by Google suggests that videos should be no more than 3.5 minutes in length as the average viewer loses interest after 3.5 minutes. 
• Build Video Ready Slides - This is great advice because using slides will assist you in being concise and to the point. You can add visuals and text to the slides to help explain the concept you are teaching. 
• Record - You will have to choose the hardware and software to use to create your video. Having a good microphone to record your voice is very helpful. The REMC SAVE project has good recommendations for purchasing the right microphone and/or headphones with a mic. 
• Enhance Engagement - As you continue through the sections of this course you will learn about tools to assist you in creating videos that interactive and can provide feedback to the students as they watch the video. 
• Be Yourself - We all want to make good professional videos for our students but we also know that time is of the essence and a polished video is not always necessary. You know your students. Be personal and authentic.

3. Watch this video "How to Make a GREAT Instructional Video". This video has excellent advice and follows the Five Steps mentioned in the Edutopia article. It mentions both screencasting and shooting your own video. 

4. Your last step for this section is to read the article "How to Make an Instructional Video".

There are 25 tips that are must-reads! The takeaway in this article is how important it is to create a script or storyboard that outlines what you are going to do and say in the video.

There is even a free downloadable storyboard to use. Even if you do not use a formal storyboard, you should make an outline of the points you want to cover.

You will save time if you are organized with your thoughts when you begin to film or screencast. 

5. You just learned some tips to create a good instructional video. In this course, you will be creating a short video yourself to use with students or staff. It may seem overwhelming at first but once you are comfortable with the software/hardware and organize your content and script, you will become a pro at creating your own instructional videos. 

Let’s move on to Video Creation Tools.