EDU629: Blog 2

Digital Collaboration and Video Tools: A Power Duo for Learning

The emergence of digital collaboration tools and video technology has created never before imagined ways for students and professionals to work and learn together.

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When people share a common goal, they are more eager to combine their strengths, work together, and help each other out. Likewise, whether in a workplace or classroom, digital collaboration tools and learning videos bring people together in real-time, allowing them to contribute to the same documents, create a curation of shared resources, inspire a culture of connection and engagement, and much more.

DIGITAL COLLABORATION TOOLS

Using a digital collaboration tool is the next best thing to being there in person. It enables people to work and learn together in ways like never before. Colleagues can synchronously enter data into the same spreadsheet while sitting at their computers across the world from each other. Teachers can deliver live video lessons, store homework assignments for 24/7 student access, work on documents with students simultaneously, and enable group projects.

We recently used Microsoft Teams, a collaboration tool, to conduct our monthly town hall at work. Teams allowed us to display PowerPoint presentations onscreen while presenters appeared on webcam videos and talked us through the slides. People posted questions and comments using the group chat feature. At the click of a button, Teams segmented employees into “breakout sessions" where facilitators led focus groups. The event organizer recorded the virtual meeting and shared the video in an easy-access Teams file repository for future viewing. This is an excellent example of the benefits that a collaboration tool can bring to a learning environment.

Collaboration tools and educational videos complement each other. For example, a collaboration tool can produce a learning video, like when our IT manager conducts open-house video calls. She offers informal Q&A sessions to employees, and afterward, the recording becomes a learning video.

Likewise, there are times when a learning video can also be a part of a collaboration tool. For example, this week, I needed to review a company learning course in draft mode. Because the storyboard was in Articulate, an e-learning LMS course creator, I was able to asynchronously post my comments directly inside the video program, where our L&D team will be able to view and reply collaboratively.

As a work-from-home employee and an online graduate student, I’m on a computer no less than 14 hours a day. I could not be successful in my professional and collegiate lives without digital collaboration tools and learning videos.

For example, a recent school assignment was creating a two-minute learning video on a digital collaboration tool (I chose OneNote). While the heavy lifting of this project was to create a storyboard and produce my video, it also required our three-person student team to collaborate on Teams and create a YouTube playlist of our respective videos. Using Teams allowed us to address the project elements together, arrive at decisions, and update our planning document in real-time while displayed onscreen.

VIDEO AS A LEARNING TOOL

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” “Seeing is believing.” “Show, don’t tell.” These famous adages suggest that seeing something is better for understanding and learning than just being told about it.

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

Anton Chekhov

Using video as a learning tool can benefit all environments, including a professional workplace and educational settings of all ages. Whether a video is used as part of a classroom, an instructor-led course, online training, or something else, leveraging videos as a learning tool can create a significant impact.

Each educational setting can offer customized advantages depending on the purpose and audience, but let’s first look at the common benefits that video-based learning offers across all contexts.

COMMON BENEFITS

For starters, video-based learning is beneficial because seeing versus hearing helps the learner facilitate critical thinking, understanding, and problem solving (Hart, 2021). Watching something being performed better prepares learners to do it themselves because they don’t have to rely only on their imagination; they can use their other senses. Meaning videos deliver experiential learning moments and bring static thoughts to life (Brown, 2022).

Videos are also engaging; they bring the outside world to you. And this is good considering that the hours of our days and nights vary across global time zones. Asynchronous (pre-recorded) videos give workplaces and classrooms excellent autonomy (Bevan, 2020) to conduct learning whenever it’s most convenient. This inclusion helps to keep everyone involved and engaged. Location, time, and cost are no longer concerns for creating a learning space or bringing a learning group together.

There is a reason that video-sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo attract millions of viewers each month: videos appeal to a broad audience because they let people process information naturally. Meaning people process what they see on a screen in the same way they process everyday interactions (Bevan, 2020).

I search the internet several times a week to learn how to do something technical on my computer. There are many written articles to choose from, but I usually look for a video tutorial on the subject. Watching something in action helps the visual processing part of my brain to remember the information because it offers an added association element. People learn better through demonstrations.

One of my favorite reasons for learning from videos is the flexibility I have to pause, rewind, or skip—this allows me to take notes, reflect on a new thought, or balance my time by finishing it later. Also, videos are convenient. They are accessible from all digital streaming devices (laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc.) and online everywhere, from video-sharing platforms to e-learning apps like LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, and TED talks.

PROFESSIONAL SETTING

Videos can be an effective way to train employees. For our company annual Health & Safety course, it’s not practical to use live-action videos to demonstrate unsafe situations. Still, we can create onscreen scenarios to get teaching points across by using entertaining animations. We use “What would you do?” interactive challenges to ask ethical questions in our annual Global Ethics training course.

People tend to think workplace compliance topics are dull and dry. In my role as a training manager, during the storyboard planning process of a compliance course, we make sure to pepper and balance out the video with various types of multimedia to make it exciting and keep viewers engaged. For example, studies show that short videos enable more efficient processing and memory recall (Bevan, 2020). Therefore, we incorporate short, pre-recorded videos of executives talking, as well as an array of graphics, animations, music, and interactive Check Your Understanding quizzes to keep things interactive and learners involved.

A video doesn’t have to be made from just one type of media. It can be a curated mix of homemade videos (like our executive videos) mixed with outsourced or purchased content (like the animations that we use) and other digital elements (like overlay text, graphics, and music). To keep things interesting and viewers engaged, take advantage of the many types of digital media that can be inserted into a video.

Below are some ideas for using videos as a learning tool in a professional setting:

• You can create a video of Frequently Asked Questions for new employees made by current employees; use slides and narrated voice-overs if people are too shy for a webcam.

• A video could be played at a team meeting and then discussed.

• A video tour of a new or faraway facility (Shearer, 2020) can make employees feel more connected to other company areas.

• Our IT manager offers Tech Talk video calls twice a week where employees can drop in and ask technical questions; these sessions are recorded and stored in a training library for others to benefit.

• I create text-heavy technical how-to training guides in OneNote that could become short “show and tell” screen-sharing demonstration videos.

• Use videos as an on-the-job training tool to learn a particular task or cross-train employees.

These experiences create social benefits because they help build common ground and cultivate a company and team culture (Hart, 2021). They also offer an organizational advantage by instilling a sense of pride and belonging in the company. Lastly, they help to level skillsets and provide knowledge in a more digestible way.

CLASSROOM SETTING

Videos are good teachers. A 2015 survey showed that 93% of teachers believe educational videos improve the learning experience (Bevan, 2020). A different survey said that “82% of educators polled felt that using videos to teach boosts student achievement levels” (Bevan, 2020).

Video grabs a learner’s attention in a way that printed materials do not. For example, last week, I learned basic video editing skills in Camtasia by watching videos on YouTube. I grasped the lesson much faster than if I had only written text to read.

From nursery rhyme videos to complex collegiate mathematical equations, videos offer a “cognitive alternative to the contemporary book-based learning approach” (Hart, 2021). The human brain processes videos 60,000 times faster than text (CrowdWisdom, 2021). This falls back to the “show, don’t tell” adage we talked about earlier.

The use of video has become a dominant part of modern classroom learning (Bergwall, 2015). Videos can help to complement a lesson (by facilitating a discussion) or be the primary learning tool (and act as the instructor) for the learner. It can be used in many ways: 1:1 student-to-device, as a classroom activity, with blended learning, and in a flipped classroom.

Below are some ideas for using videos as a learning tool in a classroom setting:

• Students can watch a video at home then discuss it during class (flipped classroom).

• Videos can be displayed on classroom smartboards or interactive devices for a collaborative experience.

• Students working on a group project in different locations can watch a video together using collaboration tools.

• Using a Virtual Reality (VR) headset, students can watch anything on YouTube in VR mode (Broida, 2016).

• Teachers or students can create curated video playlists for assignments or future reference.
  

Digital technology has forever changed the way we work and school together.

Steve Jobs said, “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” Thanks to technology like digital collaboration tools and online educational videos, not only has our individual growth potential skyrocketed, but the collective possibilities of what we can achieve together have grown exponentially.

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References

Bergwall, T. (2015, January 2). 7 Reasons Students Learn Better With Video. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-reasons-students-learn-better-video-travis-bergwall/

Bevan, M. (2020, March 25). Why Videos are Important in Education. NextThought Studios. https://www.nextthoughtstudios.com/video-production-blog/2017/1/31/why-videos-are-important-in-education

Broida, R. (2016, May 16). Watch any YouTube video in VR mode. CNET. https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/watch-any-youtube-video-in-vr-mode/

Brown, L. (2022, January 14). Benefits for Teacher Using Video in the Classroom. Wondershare. https://filmora.wondershare.com/video-editing-tips/benefits-for-using-video-in-classroom.html

CrowdWisdom. (2021, March 18). 5 benefits of video-based learning. https://www.crowdwisdomlms.com/blog/5-benefits-of-video-based-learning/

Hart, S. (2021, May 12). 3 Key Benefits Of Video-Based Learning You Should Not Ignore. eLearning Industry. https://elearningindustry.com/key-benefits-of-video-based-learning#:~:text=Video%2Dbased%20learning%20can%20be,the%20part%20of%20the%20learner

Shearer, J. (2020, March 5). Make Videos That Click With Prospective Students. Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Career Advice, Jobs. https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/call-action-marketing-and-communications-higher-education/make-videos-click-prospective

Weaver, J. (2016, March 29). 6 Ways to Raise the Bar on Higher Ed Videos. Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Career Advice, Jobs. https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/call-action-marketing-and-communications-higher-education/6-ways-raise-bar-higher-ed-videos

Williamson, J. (n.d.). Twelve Tips for Creating Effective Teaching Videos. Michigan State University. https://omerad.msu.edu/teaching/instructional-design/27-teaching/202-twelve-tips-for-creating-effective-teaching-videos

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