Tips for Creating Videos

Now that you know a little bit more about how to use Canvas Studio, let's look at some tips for the video creation process.

  • Recorded videos should not be longer than 4-8 minutes. This is not to say that you can't provide a lecture longer than 8 minutes; videos just need to be segmented into a series by topic or simply numbering them (e.g. Chapter 1, part 1, etc.) Student attention spans are short and research shows they will tend to engage more with videos that are 6 minutes or less. Another advantage of breaking up a longer lecture into segments is so that students can better manage their time. It's easier to come back and pick up where they left off at a later time if they can't watch everything in one sitting. 
  • Using Studio provides additional engagement. If you use Studio to create the videos, you can provide interactivity by turning on the "comments feature" or embedding quiz questions. Additionally, you can see which users viewed the video and for how long.
  • To script or not to script? Creating a script for your videos is very helpful for planning purposes and for helping you stay on track when creating the video. However, do not feel that your video needs to be "perfect". Students want genuine, authentic, and real instructor interactions – not scripted. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if you mess up or if your dog is barking in the background. Just “talking” to students is more relaxed and more meaningful to them.
  • Use Storyboarding techniques to help you plan and visualize the final product.  For quick welcome videos or weekly videos, you may not need to go to the trouble of storyboarding, but it can be a useful technique for more involved lecture or demonstration videos. Traditional storyboarding involves drawing images like a comic strip, but if you prefer not to draw, it's also beneficial to make notes and just describe the various stages of the video. To help you get started, you can use an Download instructional video storyboard template. 
  • Don't forget your Closed Captions! Studio makes it super easy to create closed captions. If you are intentional about speaking clearly into your microphone when creating a video, Studio is very accurate in translating the captions. It will even add capital letters and some punctuation! Canvas says it's 85% accurate, but according to others currently using it at other institutions, it's closer to 95% accurate. For directions on how to automatically generate your captions (once your video is complete), see How do I add captions to media in Canvas Studio?

This is a really great video by Dr. Michael Wesch...

 

Additional Resource: 

Instructional Videos Part 1: Pre-Production