Last month, I wrote to you about Ally, a tool that is helping us create a more equal online opportunity for students of all kinds. In that article, I mentioned that SHSU Online courses utilize a healthy amount of multimedia, which enriches the learning experience through the use of dynamic content.
If you’re like me, you are probably asking yourself whether research makes the case for the use of dynamic content in online courses; and, if it does, what are the benefits? My curiosity on the matter led me to find a plethora of information on the use of video and multimedia in online teaching and learning.
I was able to glean a lot of valuable information from the research that I discovered. For instance, some researchers contend that video is an integral part of our story-telling nature, and that we transmit communication at deeper levels of engagement when we use video to tell a story or explain a concept (Chung, 2006). Others suggest “student commitment, retention, and attention spans all increase when quality videos are integrated into the [learning] experience (Lovellette, 2016).
Still others posit that videos help establish the instructor’s social presence, which plays into several key best practices for online facilitation, including personalization of the professor, establishing a warm and welcoming tone, and building a sense of belonging and shared learning community (Baim, 2015; Rottmann & Rabidoux, 2017). By creating videos, instructors can enhance the presentation of lecture content and “even create personal connections that would be impossible to build through slide presentations or a text-based curriculum” (Lovellette, 2016).
Last year, SHSU Online produced 406 high-quality videos for online courses, with an additional 433 to date this year. Out of this year’s video production for courses, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences tops the list with 180 videos. College of Business with 90 videos takes second place. These numbers are a testament to the use of dynamic content in online courses at SHSU, and we don’t anticipate that the creation of this type of media will slow down. In fact, video production is up 22% since the beginning of summer.
In an effort to support a more equal online opportunity for students of all kinds, SHSU Online also transcribes video content. Media is captioned whether the videos are produced in-house or externally. A total of 393 were transcribed for Summer courses, with an additional 577 for Fall 2018.
While video didn’t kill the radio star, you can make killer videos for your course. SHSU Online's Multi-Media Services are led by Director and producer, Charles Henson. Sample services include the creation of instructional videos, lecture capture, audio production, graphic design, educational gaming, and digital animations. If you are interested in enriching your online courses with dynamic content, contact us today!