Magna 20 Minute Mentor | How Can I Assess Students in my Online Classes through Student-created Videos?

During this video from the Magna 20-Minute Mentor series, Dr. Oliver Dreon presents information about how to use student produced videos to serve as assessment activities. Dr. Dreon proposes that many assignments instructors currently use in their courses can become a video activity, or be enhanced by adding a video component. Using video can be especially helpful in online courses to provide additional modes of interpersonal communications through voice, facial expressions and body language.

Having these additional audio/visual communication channels can offer more insights into students’ levels of comprehension than text-based learning activities by “making their learning more visible”. Dr. Dreon also suggests that using video assignments provides additional opportunities to enhance a Community of Inquiry, which includes teaching, cognitive and social presence. Additionally, he cites research that indicates student-created videos can increase student motivation, learner autonomy, and classroom community.

Dr. Dreon states that video assignments can be used in place of a wide variety of text-based activities. He explains using student-created videos instead of written papers, and also applying video assignments for student presentations, demonstrations, and reflections. Some significant considerations for any assignment are based on the Control Value Theory, which states that students will be more motivated to learn when they feel they have control and find value in the learning activity. Therefore, Dr. Dreon emphasizes the importance of creating assignments that are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time oriented. Including detailed rubrics will help communicate with the students about the precise expectations of the assignment and the criteria that will be assessed. Lastly, in order to make these video assignments successful, instructors should provide tutorials that help students gain the required technology skills. Dr. Dreon also suggests offering links to applications that have general guides for creating videos such as YouTube, YuJa, Zoom, and Flipgrid.

This Magna video addresses the LCCC Faculty Competency domain for Teaching and Learning and can be accessed by completing this one-time registration to view all the videos in the Magna 20 Minute Mentor series.