Film videos for remote teaching

Rather than taking your existing content and format shifting – a ‘lift and shift’ approach – there are a few simple steps you can take to create a better student experience. ‘Chunking’ a long video by cutting it up into a series of smaller concept videos allows you to book-end content with activities and opportunities for students to engage and apply their learning. It also provides an additional structural dimension that can help frame the overarching concept. These in turn allows students to learn at their own pace, and apply the concept and test their understanding as they progress, improving retention and later revision.

Instead of uploading 1 or 2 hour content videos, consider identifying key topical break points. Some studies suggest the ideal engagement length for an educational video is 6-10 minutes, but use your discretion – it’s better to bring out the natural structure of your content, rather than strictly adhering to any number. Both YouTube and Kaltura offer in-built video editors which allow you to trim and clip existing videos, but if you’re making new recordings, simply save a new recording for each concept.

For accessibility reasons, your videos should be captions. This is easily achievable in both YouTube and Kaltura. Machine captioning can get pretty close to accurate and you also have the option to edit captions yourself. In addition to making your video more accessible, international students who struggle with English can use the captions to help understand you better.

Regardless of what type of video you’re recording, audio will most likely be your most important aspect. Be sure you’re in a quiet space, and that the device you’re using is close to your subject. The closer you are to the microphone, the better your audio will be. Also make sure you’re recording in a quiet space and be sure to do a test and listen back before you record your lecture.

Wanting to record yourself doing a PowerPoint presentation? Or perhaps you need to show your screen using a website or doing some coding? Screen capture is the way to go! For PowerPoint users, you can use the in-built screen recording feature.

For Mac users, we recommend using the screen recording feature in QuickTime.

Perhaps the easiest option overall is to use Kaltura Capture, which will also directly upload your recording to Kaltura.

If filming yourself with a mobile device like a tablet or mobile, make sure your is horizontal. Holding it vertically will give you black bars on the side, which isn’t ideal.

Secondly, while we do want windows and other sources of natural light, we don’t want to shoot against it as doing so will make the subject look dark and silhouetted:

When filming on a laptop, keep in mind you’re probably looking down towards your webcam, which isn’t always the most flattering angle. It puts an emphasis on that unwanted double chin and has the viewer looking right up your nose. So instead, try to elevate your laptop to make the webcam more eye level with you.

So now you’re all done recording and you’re finally ready to deliver your video, but what’s the best way to do that?

Most students are able to access videos embedded with Kaltura, although there have been some technical and international access related issues during the COVID-19 situation. If your students are having this issue, we recommend getting the file size for the video down to 100mb or less, then uploading it to either OneDrive or Sharepoint and sending that link. If still unsuccessful, a last resort effort could be getting the video down to 20mb and sending it as an email attachment. To lower the file size, we recommend using the free video compression program Handbreak.

Kaltura is our primary recommendation over YouTube. Some users will need to enable it first. Your next step would then be to upload your video, and then embed it using My Media. If for some reason you’d rather use YouTube, you can use your staff/student email and password as an account.