Dr. Wade Fish, Educational Leadership
Using Weekly Agenda Videos to Enhance Online Course Delivery
Teaching online courses over the years has provided me the opportunity to enhance my teaching as I have seen my skills improve each semester with the incorporation of new technology and best practices. Thanks to online teaching, I am ensured that I will always discover new ways to provide an enriched learning environment to my students.
Despite the many advantages of online instruction, there are still inaccurate myths floating around about online learning such as that this mode of delivery does not promote quality interaction resulting in students feeling isolated. Another misconception is that online learning does not facilitate higher order thinking resulting in limited student learning outcomes. Yes, these are fallacies, as a properly designed online course can provide positive student learning outcomes and quality interaction between a) student-and-instructor, b) student-and-student, and c) student-and-course curriculum. A positive learning experience is highly dependent of course upon your desire and effort.
One practice that I use to build quality interaction between students and myself is to incorporate instructional videos within each weekly course agenda. One advantage that I have quickly discovered through using weekly agenda videos is the ability of my students to feel more connected to me. I have also realized that these videos allow me to convey instructions in a more efficient manner.
Typically, my weekly agendas begin on a Monday and conclude the following Midnight Sunday. Within all of my online courses, I begin a weekly agenda with a video that walks my students through my expectations to include course readings, activities, assignments, and due dates. I also use this opportunity to highlight important reminders that include when I will have their graded assignments posted with my audio feedback to them in the grade book.
My process of developing a weekly agenda video consists of creating a video through Camtasia to where I “screen capture” the actual agenda and links within particular web pages and documents. Once I view and edit my video through Camtasia, I save my work to You Tube as an unlisted video. Saving my videos as ‘unlisted’ allows anyone with the proper link to view the video. Please refer to You Tube to learn more about the differences between public, private, and unlisted videos. Converting my video to You Tube allows me the ability to cleanly embed an HTML link to my particular eCollege weekly agenda.
The following You Tube link, http://youtu.be/CtKu9oP_BoQ , is an example of one of my weekly agenda videos. If you have any questions about weekly agenda videos or other forms of best practice that I use to enhance my online courses, please do not hesitate to contact me at Wade.Fish@tamuc.edu. Thank you.
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