What if making videos never helped your students?

Written by Steven Kolber, Literacy Improvement Teacher & Learning Specialist, Brunswick Secondary College

For the last 5 years I have been making videos for my students, explaining concepts, correcting common errors, and making content more accessible and convenient. 

I’ve produced more than 600 videos during this time, but what if these videos never improved results, helped any students or made things easier for students who found accessing text difficult?  

I believe I would still continue to make them.  

The more I’ve read research about and discussed professional learning for teachers, the more I’ve realised how complicated it can be to draw a neat line between things that teachers learn and how well their students learn. 

I’ve also read a great deal about research into flipped learning, the most popular approach for applying instructional video to teaching. They all point to a very similar thing: 

It’s tricky.  

Whilst it may seem logically obvious that teachers who learn about teaching: by attending courses; studying; or joining conferences; the reality is that we cannot establish this with any certainty.  

So, if we follow the research and leave the connection between teacher professional learning and student progress to one side. We go back in time, explain this idea to me and let me choose whether or not to make videos for the next five years, 

My choice would be to continue this habit.  

I believe that even assuming zero effect on students, the process of making a video, teaching to a camera or device, editing, producing, and uploading it is in itself useful.  

Very few teachers ever see themselves teach, or are ever observed, or coached by a peer. This is one thing that instructional video brings to the teachers who practice it. The process of openness, being willing to learn, developing your own voice, your own style and your own teaching approaches is itself a significant reward.  

If I could inculcate one habit in any teacher colleagues who I work with it would be the production of instructional video.  

These videos need never even be shared with students to produce these effects. Teacher self-actualisation and continual, iterative, and focused improvement of teaching is the result of this habit.  

Now, bringing back in what we know from the research, I’ve written elsewhere at length about the benefits, affordances and research-proven benefits of instructional video.  

I and many others have improved their teaching, their delivery, and their confidence through making teaching videos. They received genuine and precise feedback from viewing statistics and direct student responses. They’ve been unknowingly preparing themselves for the possibility of remote or distance teaching brought about by COVID. 

There’s no time like right now to take your teaching to the next level.

Steven will be presenting at the National Education Summit Melbourne on Friday 17 June 2022 - in the Diverse Learners Symposium, come along and say Hi and hear about a range of other strategies to use in your classroom.