How to Effectively Use Videos In Live Sessions

When instructors want to discuss showing videos during their synchronous live sessions, we commonly hear:

“I want to show a video because I want to break up the content.” 

“I think this video is powerful, and I want us to experience it together.”

“I want to make sure that they watch it because it’s important for the discussion we’re going to have.”

Do any of these reasons sound familiar to you? 

Generally, live session synchronous time is for students and educators to actively apply, reflect, and analyze under your direct guidance. Simply watching videos for the reasons above is not considered active learning and takes away the time that students could be demonstrating capacity to dig deeper, learning from you and your experiences, and practicing through real-world contextualized cases. By transforming video-watching into a learning task, you make it even more impactful and meaningful.

General Tips

• The video or clip you choose should be new to the students, not from the already created asynchronous content, and demonstrate a difficult concept succinctly.

• If watching a visual component is vital to supporting students achieving course learning objectives, focus on the most important clips again to maximize student application during live sessions. 

• Make sure you understand the steps involved with sharing video and audio in your Zoom classroom, and be prepared to have alternative options should you encounter video or audio issues. In a word, practice! (Want to practice with some live help and guidance?  Schedule a Coaching Session today!)

Once you are comfortable with what to show and how to show a video, turn it into a learning task with any of these strategies.

Before The Video

• Set the context. Since the video connects to the content, reviewing the past week’s asynchronous content, for example, is a simple and effective way of activating students’ thinking on the week’s topic. Questions like “What was the most challenging for you in the learning for this week?” can be applied in nearly any type of class.

During The Video

• Just before playing the video, give a learning task such as a question or a few questions that guide the students’ attention to the learning point. An example could be “Summarize the video in one sentence.” and “What are the key takeaways?”

After The Video

• Review responses from the “During The Video” questions. If it is clear that the learning objective was not met, consider replaying the key part or parts.

• Depending on the video and on the learning task, use more specific knowledge checking questions to help ensure students have grasped the learning concepts. 

• Active higher-order thinking with more challenging, topic-expanding questions that require making connections to prior learned content either from the course or from the program. Making connections to their own field experience, too, goes a long way in synthesizing learning.

If you can keep video watching during asynchronous time and focus on the discussion of it during the synchronous sessions, even better. But if you cannot, these strategies for giving a learning purpose to video watching during your live session will help you keep learning at the very center.