Learning with either an online or offline video has been around for some time now, but due to one reason or the other, it has not been used effectively in some parts of the world. Others even consider it as a method used by lazy students to easily divert their attention which is untrue. Apart from being the basis of learning for online students, those that are attending a normal college can equally benefit from online videos. It has been proven countless times that students tend to remember a greater part or even everything they watch when a video is used. It is highly stimulating, interactive, engaging, arouse curiosity and a fun way to learn. Here are some ways to use online videos effectively for educational purposes.
Make use of educational video sites
There is an explosion of websites designed to help students learn better on the internet and more will still emerge. They can be used with or without the assistance of lecturers once students are ready to learn. All courses and topics like Engineering, Science, Medicine, Anatomy, Mathematics, History and Computer Science are available on these websites. Most of them are free to use and students can easily access them as long as there is a viable internet connection on their smartphones, tablets or laptops. Examples of such sites include Academic Earth, Live Science, Wonder How To, YouTube for Schools and Teacher Tube.
Useful for complex or boring courses
Naturally, students find some courses very interesting, while others arenot. Having a mindset that a course is complex is a recipe for failure if care is not taken. Students can turn to online video to help them develop interest in complex courses using visual demonstration. As time goes on, they may realize that the most difficult ones are now their favorite topics. Foreign languages and Mathematics can also be learnt with online videos.
Choose high quality videos
In choosing or creating online video for education, its quality can make or mar everything. Using low quality videos will fail to produce the desired effects and make learning boring or confusing. On the other hand, high quality videos are bound to spur irresistible attraction that will compel students to learn more. Other factors such as sound quality plus the size, visibility, grammar and quality of texts used for subtitles must be high too.
As a tool for communication
Using video for communicating is a cheap and time-saving method that enables effective interaction between students. They can even decide to set up an online study group using Skype. The problem areas of each course can then be handled using this approach if they don’t want to meet in person. At the end of the day all the active participants will benefit immensely. Assignments, issues regarding essays and where to get the best paper writing help can be discussed when interacting with video.
Online video can be an indispensable tool for learning now and later in the future. It shouldused be used in moderation and one way to make this possible is to use short videos as they are highly effective in passing messages across within a short period of time.
