The Importance of Overview Videos

This week I read an interesting article entitled, "Supporting High Quality Teaching in Online Programs" by Santelli, Stewart, and Mandernach. What I found interesting about this article was that online students found rubrics and sample assignments to be more valuable than instructional videos.

I was intrigued by this because it is a general understanding that videos are the way to go in online courses. However, I wouldn't go so far as to say they are not important, just that students place a higher value on rubrics and sample assignments.

This really makes sense if you think about it because students in online courses really have to use a lot of perception when completing assignments. It may be unclear to them what an assignment is really asking for. In a face to face class, we tend to review assignments much more in-depth than in an online class. 

For this reason, I started creating overview videos for my students a couple of years ago. In these videos I give students an overview of the assignments they will be doing that week. If they have to watch a video or use a tool outside of the LMS, I also walk them through that and how to access it. For instance, this week students had to access 2 articles from the school library. I walked them through this process so they could see how it was done, then I gave them a brief walk- through of the assignment they had to complete. For higher stakes assignments, I give them a more detailed walk-through of the assignment and the rubric for the assignment. Here is an example of an Overview video I did this semester for one of my course: Overview Video HERE.

I think doing this as a video in addition to having written instructions is really helpful. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Do you do anything similar? Be sure to share your ideas in The Online Educator Facebook Group by clicking the link HERE. Also, as a treat don’t forget to GRAB YOUR FREE GUIDE to the 3 Secrets to Teaching Online Successfully.

In this week's newsletter I'll share the resources I use to create the overview videos. If you don't already receive them, be sure to sign up HERE.