Using Online Videos for Teaching In and Out of Class

I spent a very fun week this past summer at the American Association of Physics Teachers  meeting. As a 6th year graduate student in physics who is very interested in teaching, I found it invigorating to be surrounding by other physics-loving teachers. One of my favorite sessions from the meeting was a "YouTube Sharathon" where physics teachers would share their favorite YouTube videos for use in the class along with associated student activities. I came away with lots of exciting ideas for using videos in and out of class that I thought I would share with you here.

I mostly have physics and math examples, but videos are useful for ALL disciplines so I would love to hear your own thoughts on the use of online videos in your discipline and/or your own favorite educational online videos in the comments below!

(1) Connecting concepts to the real world in class
Teachers often say they want to connect course content to the 'real world' to (a) help with students' understanding or (b) make the content more interesting for their students. Using short online videos in the classroom can certainly help with these goals. The entertainment factor is a given (who wouldn't love spending class time watching something!), but making sure the video is effective in engaging students with the content and/or concepts you want them to learn is more tricky.

Teachers should have clear goals and objectives in mind for what they want students to take away from the video and clearly convey these objectives to their students. To help students achieve these objectives, the teacher should plan an activity around the video. These activities can vary greatly, from having students analyze the James Bond airplane stunt in Goldeneye to determine its scientific plausibility, to leading a discussion on the broader relevance of information transfer after watching the 'levitating slinky' video (see below). This experience will certainly be fun for the students, and also provide a great opportunity to connect abstract or difficult concepts to the real (or virtual) world around them.

(2) Learning content outside of class
A popular new style of teaching found to significantly enhance student learning is the flipped classroom - essentially where content coverage is moved outside of class and class time is spent addressing misconceptions and engaging with the material in more depth. Assigned reading is of course one way of pushing content coverage outside the classroom, but students rarely do this reading without extra incentives. Online videos can be a great way to cover out-of-class content, with the incentive that it will actually be entertaining and educational. And, don't worry, there are a lot of online videos that cover content in a more vibrant manner than traditional lecture.

Here are some of my favorite sites to find videos for learning content, and feel free to share your own!

(a) Vi Hart's YouTube channel for math concepts, but to get you started, here's a video exploring binary trees through doodles:

(b) Minute Physics YouTube channel, which addresses a lot of interesting physics questions.

(c) Check out Ted Ed for great educational videos on a wide variety of topics.

Those are my thoughts on online videos in and out of the classroom, but feel free to share your own in the comments section below!