Design learning activities in and around content videos

One of the key ways we can approach student learning is to think in terms of learning outcomes – what is the purpose of the lesson? The destination? What do we expect students to be able to do with what they’ve learned? These outcomes are usually expressed in the form of verbs: to remember, to understand, to apply, to evaluate, to create and so on.

To arrive at these outcomes, we typically craft a learning journey that involves scaffolded opportunities to acquire and develop these knowledges, skills and competencies, and to demonstrate their capabilities. These opportunities are learning activities. A typical learning activity might involve some sort of instruction or information provided by the teacher, opportunities for the students to engage and apply, and ideally, some sort of feedback. 

With this model of student learning in mind, it’s important to consider the role content plays in this journey. Content may be the important instruction or information you’re providing, but its consumption is not the end-point of the lesson. Watching a video is not a full learning activity, and a video alone has limited opportunity for engagement and none to provide feedback. Of course, you’re not just setting a video for entertainment purposes – you want them to process it, to understand and learn something from it, and to be able to do something with it in another context. 

While formative assessment (where marks count towards a final grade) is one way we provide students opportunity to put theory into practice and gain feedback, the time gap between sharing content and assessment can be large. Students learn best when they have many opportunities for active learning – where they do something cognitive with the information they’re given, and when there are multiple opportunities for feedback.

Fortunately, the digital format provides many additional ways students can engage with content, as well as scalable methods for providing feedback, some of which is automated. Here we’ll look at three different spaces for setting activities and providing feedback opportunities – before, during and after a chunked content video. Before that, however, let’s pause for a quick reflection on passive and active notions of video consumption.

Passive vs active learning

Media theory has long since moved away from the idea that consumers of media passively absorb content like a sponge soaking up information. Rather, cognitive theory shows that even the most lightly engaged viewer is actively participating and making meaning, eg. by forming connections, evaluating, and making comparisons. Nonetheless, when it comes to learning, our goal is not light engagement – we’re looking to transform the learner, which requires a deeper level activity. The cognitive theory of multimedia learning suggests this can be achieved by “motivat(ing) learners to exert and maintain effort to make sense of the material at a sufficient level of intensity” (Mayer, 2014, emphasis added). 

Unfortunately, many students approach watching video content (and attending on-campus lectures) as passive activities – in which the mere act of showing up is enough to learn what’s being said. Numerous studies of course have demonstrated that students learn better when they’re actively engaging – a recent one by Meyer, Fiorella & Stull (2020), outlines the ‘generative activity principle’ – informed by numerous experiments – that people learn better when asked to engage in explicit, generative behaviours during the lesson. These include examples such as summary note-taking (learning by summarizing), writing an explanation (learning by self-explaining), physically imitating the instructor’s demonstration (learning by enacting), or representing a concept visually (learning by drawing) (Mayer, 2014). 

One of the quickest wins you can achieve is to foreground this principle in your lesson. Be meta – explain what students can do to improve their learning and why. Explain that simply watching is not enough to fully understand. When you set tasks, be explicit about why you’re doing so, and the value students will get out of it. We also know that students don’t always recognise when they’re receiving feedback. Be explicit there and help students recognise feedback in its many forms – whether automated (eg. a quiz), from you (eg. as individual comments or at a more collective level), or from their peers (eg. a discussion.) 

If you can shift that student mindset from passive to active, and make clear the value of students engaging and receiving feedback, you’ll go a long way towards improving student learning.

Now, on to some specific activities you can set. We’ll focus here on the smaller tasks they might do based on a single video, remembering that there will be larger, more complex tasks they do week-to-week, and in their assessments. 

Before and after the video

The previous article on How to Introduce and Frame Your Video Content and Objectives looked at the way you can use the layout of a Canvas or UTSOnline page to sandwich the video between instructions and additional information.

Activities set before and after a video may mirror each other in form, but serve different purposes. Activities done pre-video (eg. pre-quiz, pre-reflection, pre-poll) can be used to:

1. Find out prior knowledge on a subject, or invite the student to reflect on what they already know 
2. Elicit a comparative “before” state, which can then be paired with an activity that looks at the “after” state – eg. how has the video they’ve just watched modified their understanding of a topic? Changed their view or perspective? Reframed a topic? What can they do now that they couldn’t before? Ideally, we want them to see their own growth and change through their learning

By contrast, activities set after usually get them to do something with the information they’ve just received. 

Some simple ideas:

• Canvas/Blackboard Quiz, H5P Quiz – can be used to test recognition and recall, or apply a formula or concept to a new scenario. Feedback can be automated (multiple-choice, fixed answers), or marked (open-ended questions.) H5P allows for complex question types, including image hotspots and pair matching. It is worth noting that quizzes are private and individual. 
• Anonymous Questions and Responses – the teacher poses a question, and the students share their positions eg. polling with Mentimetre, or adding to a Google Jamboard. Can be used to provide anonymous insights into opinions, experiences, thoughts etc., or can crowdsource the topic (eg. “share more examples of…” )
• Comments and Discussions – In Canvas, the Comments Box can be added to a video where students and teachers can ask questions and reply to each other. The strengths of the Comments Box are that it’s quick and easy, but it can suffer in that it’s a single box for ALL students and discussions in the class. Discussion Forums can be used for more in-depth and organized interactions, where discussions can be divided into tutorials, groups or topics, and users can share rich media (eg. images and video). (See also Quick Win Strategies for Online Discussions and 5 Tips for Creating Engaging Online Discussions)
• Reflection – Students can be encouraged to write their own reflective piece, which can be for themselves (ie. non-assessed), submitted (formative or summative), or shared (in a discussion).

The above touch on some centrally supported online tools, but really, your topic and imagination are the limits! Perhaps you’re crowdsourcing a wiki? Maybe students are encouraged to create a professional social media account and share something there? Co-design a page on Canvas that’s edited by students and teachers? Perhaps there’s something physical they need to find and measure? Think back to the learning objectives and outcomes you’re trying to achieve, and what activities support the cognitive application of the content you’ve just shared. You might also want to consider the relationship between the online lesson and any on-campus sessions you will run. Perhaps there’s something students will need to prepare before they come into class?

Finally, you may want to consider how you frame the activity. Is it voluntary, or is it required? How will you measure student engagement? 

During the video

In addition to pre- and post-video activities, there are ways you can prompt student interaction while they’re watching the video. Some of these include:

• Pre-video instructions – as mentioned, your framing text can instruct students to do something while they’re watching. This may be something reflective (“while you watch, consider…”, “think about…”), or more direct (“keep note of…”, “as you go, write down what you think…”, “follow along in a new browser tab…”, “draw…”)
• In-video directions – as with the above, you in your address you can give similar instructions in the middle of your presentation (“I want you to think about a time…”, “Now, pause the video, and…”) It’s best to keep these brief – if it’s a complex instruction, you’re better off splitting the video into two, so students have more time and space to complete the activity. 
• Interactive overlays – H5P has the ability to take a video and add interactive elements. There is a rich toolset available, which can do things like:
  • Add quiz questions – pause the video and ask a question (eg. predict what will happen in a chemical reaction they’re about to see, or test their recall of what they just saw)
  • Add interactive overlays – highlight certain features with annotations, use hotspots to add additional pop-up tool tips, provide links etc.)
  • At the most complex end, you can even build rich branching videos that deal with “what if…?” scenarios
• Kaltura also has a Quiz feature, although its features and interface aren’t as rich as H5Ps. If your content is in Kaltura already, this might be a good option.

If we can shift mindsets from video consumption being a passive activity, to one component in a process that involves active engagement in service of a learning outcome, our students will get a lot more out of our ‘content’.