Mr. Jeff Gotel
Project Abstract
Full Text
Professional Development Project: Videos that Enhance Learning
I have chosen to explore how using videos can make a unit more interesting and assist the students in gaining a better understanding of the course content. The right video can be crucial in getting the class engaged in a great discussion. At this point in time, the emphasis is on using videos for the Economics class I am currently teaching. While I have used videos for my mathematics classes, this is something I rarely do but am planning to do more often in the future.
So far, I have used Youtube to find the videos that are useful. The “Embed the web” feature on Haiku makes downloading videos very easy. Each one of my classes has a page on Haiku titled “videos” that allows the students to go back and watch the videos. The whole process of downloading a video using the embed the web feature is very quick and quite simple.
To date, I have had the most success with videos that show a clip from a movie with professional actors. It helps if the students have seen or heard of the movie. These types of videos are usually four to six minutes long and are best used to emphasize a particular point. For example, when I was teaching my Economics students about leverage, a video from the movie “Too big to fail was used”. This video was six and a half minutes long and highlighted the danger of leverage. During the video I paused a few times to explain particular words or phrases that the students were unfamiliar with. After the video, we had a nice discussion. Perhaps watching professional actors act out a real world event gets the students more interested. It certainly seemed like this was the case after observing the discussion that took place.
Perhaps my best use of video came while covering mergers and acquisitions in Economics. Two clips from the movie “Other peoples money” were used, one stating the argument for a company to be taken over by a corporate raider and the other a pitch by the CEO arguing that the current management was better suited to run the company. The students were really into the videos and we had an incredible discussion about each video clip afterwards with the students pretending to be shareholders and explaining to the class which side they would vote for. It was clear that the video really helped emphasize what I was trying to teach the students – the conflict of interests between shareholders and management. This lesson was my favorite class of the year as I accomplished the lesson objective and the students really had an enjoyable time learning about an otherwise “dry” topic.
Aside from bringing a lesson to life, videos can be used to save time and eliminate “tedious” tasks. For example, when teaching the congruence postulates in a proof based Geometry course, I used to have the students take out scissors and paper in order to construct specific triangles. We would then compare these triangles and see why certain arrangements (SAS) work, while others (ASS) do not work. This year, in order to save time, I played a video that featured a teacher doing this exact same exercise on the smartboard. It saved me at least one class and got the point across better than when the students create the triangles. Of course I could have done this on the smartboard myself, but then I would be unable to focus on the class while the video is playing. Also, the teacher in the video is much more proficient with the smartboard than I am.
Towards the end of the year I was introducing my Algebra I class to functions. I found a very nice introductory video on YouTube that describes what a function is, how to map one, and how to use the vertical line test. It is a seven-minute video and is a little “dry” but does a good job of getting the points across. This type of video will be especially useful for weaker students to refer back to in order to make sure they understand the basics.
When teaching some relevant financial ratios in Economics, I wanted to make sure the students had a complete understanding of the PEG ratio (which is the price/earnings ratio divided by the growth rate). To help me do this, I downloaded a two and a half minute video that does an excellent job explaining this ratio and posted the video for the students to use on Haiku. I’m led to believe that this worked as all the students did a nice job discussing this ratio in their final assignments.
Another great use of videos is to integrate a little humor into a lesson while challenging the students to think a little bit outside the box. For example, there is an Abbott and Costello video where one of the comedians “proves” that 7 x 13 = 28. Even though this is obviously wrong, it is very well done and quite funny. The challenge for students is to see if they can come up with a similar type of problem and offer a “compelling” proof that the incorrect answer is really correct.
I have chosen to explore how using videos can make a unit more interesting and assist the students in gaining a better understanding of the course content. The right video can be crucial in getting the class engaged in a great discussion. At this point in time, the emphasis is on using videos for the Economics class I am currently teaching. While I have used videos for my mathematics classes, this is something I rarely do but am planning to do more often in the future.
So far, I have used Youtube to find the videos that are useful. The “Embed the web” feature on Haiku makes downloading videos very easy. Each one of my classes has a page on Haiku titled “videos” that allows the students to go back and watch the videos. The whole process of downloading a video using the embed the web feature is very quick and quite simple.
To date, I have had the most success with videos that show a clip from a movie with professional actors. It helps if the students have seen or heard of the movie. These types of videos are usually four to six minutes long and are best used to emphasize a particular point. For example, when I was teaching my Economics students about leverage, a video from the movie “Too big to fail was used”. This video was six and a half minutes long and highlighted the danger of leverage. During the video I paused a few times to explain particular words or phrases that the students were unfamiliar with. After the video, we had a nice discussion. Perhaps watching professional actors act out a real world event gets the students more interested. It certainly seemed like this was the case after observing the discussion that took place.
Perhaps my best use of video came while covering mergers and acquisitions in Economics. Two clips from the movie “Other peoples money” were used, one stating the argument for a company to be taken over by a corporate raider and the other a pitch by the CEO arguing that the current management was better suited to run the company. The students were really into the videos and we had an incredible discussion about each video clip afterwards with the students pretending to be shareholders and explaining to the class which side they would vote for. It was clear that the video really helped emphasize what I was trying to teach the students – the conflict of interests between shareholders and management. This lesson was my favorite class of the year as I accomplished the lesson objective and the students really had an enjoyable time learning about an otherwise “dry” topic.
Aside from bringing a lesson to life, videos can be used to save time and eliminate “tedious” tasks. For example, when teaching the congruence postulates in a proof based Geometry course, I used to have the students take out scissors and paper in order to construct specific triangles. We would then compare these triangles and see why certain arrangements (SAS) work, while others (ASS) do not work. This year, in order to save time, I played a video that featured a teacher doing this exact same exercise on the smartboard. It saved me at least one class and got the point across better than when the students create the triangles. Of course I could have done this on the smartboard myself, but then I would be unable to focus on the class while the video is playing. Also, the teacher in the video is much more proficient with the smartboard than I am.
Towards the end of the year I was introducing my Algebra I class to functions. I found a very nice introductory video on YouTube that describes what a function is, how to map one, and how to use the vertical line test. It is a seven-minute video and is a little “dry” but does a good job of getting the points across. This type of video will be especially useful for weaker students to refer back to in order to make sure they understand the basics.
When teaching some relevant financial ratios in Economics, I wanted to make sure the students had a complete understanding of the PEG ratio (which is the price/earnings ratio divided by the growth rate). To help me do this, I downloaded a two and a half minute video that does an excellent job explaining this ratio and posted the video for the students to use on Haiku. I’m led to believe that this worked as all the students did a nice job discussing this ratio in their final assignments.
Another great use of videos is to integrate a little humor into a lesson while challenging the students to think a little bit outside the box. For example, there is an Abbott and Costello video where one of the comedians “proves” that 7 x 13 = 28. Even though this is obviously wrong, it is very well done and quite funny. The challenge for students is to see if they can come up with a similar type of problem and offer a “compelling” proof that the incorrect answer is really correct.