This summer, the CETL will be presenting one tip per week, focusing on a teaching practice or strategy in more depth. If there are any topics you’d like to see us explore, please let us know! We also welcome guest posts from faculty who have a tip they would like to share with their colleagues.

The Benefits of Asynchronous Videos for Students and Faculty

Even before the pandemic, studies on the use of asynchronous videos demonstrated their benefits for student learning (Borup et al., 2011; Clark et al., 2015). Using asynchronous videos provides flexibility and anytime access to content; they can improve motivation, collaboration, and participation, and help foster positive faculty-student relationships (West, 2021). Asynchronous videos can be used in courses in any modality to present concepts or questions for students to discuss, to provide feedback to students, or to provide tutorials or demonstrations of concepts or procedures. For example:  

  • Demonstration of patient positioning for physical therapy students 
  • Introducing a lab activity or providing guidelines for lab use 
  • Demonstrating how to use a specific tool or technology 
  • Role-playing to show patient-physician or employee-manager interaction scenarios 
  • Mini lectures to review (or preview) challenging concepts 
  • Providing instruction or guidance for a specific task  
  • Introducing yourself to students in a welcome video 

In her book, 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos (2020), Karen Costa addresses many benefits of using videos as part of a course, including saving time answering frequently asked questions, supporting students’ self-efficacy, making connections with students, and increasing students’ comprehension of course concepts. She provides a playlist of tips for video creation here.  

Providing videos for learning also helps students who might need to hear and see something in order to better understand it, or who benefit from being able to review the information several times. Allowing students to use video as a way to demonstrate learning could also be beneficial for students who struggle to convey their thoughts in writing. Students can create videos to provide peer reviews, share updates on a project or experience, make presentations, deliver performances, or respond to prompts. Borup (2021) provides several examples of how asynchronous video can be used for virtual discussions and small group work.  

Making educational videos does not have to be complicated and can save instructors precious time in the long run. Tools such as YuJa can be used to create engaging asynchronous videos that can be embedded in Canvas and re-used from term to term. As you consider where to use videos in your course, keep in mind these six tips for creating quality videos.  

 

Interested in exploring any of these ideas further or discussing how you might implement them in your own teaching practices? Is there a tip you’ve tried that you would like to share with colleagues? Contact CETL or schedule a consultation to continue the conversation.