We’ve kicked off 2023 with video production and a conference presentation – see below for highlights. Smit published another Premiere tutorial on using Pace’s motion graphics templates, and his previous “Basic Edits” garnered much acclaim from his followers on LinkedIn.
Media Production in January
• 46 hours of consultations with faculty and staff in Haub Law and Pace Online.
• 16 videos produced (377 minutes total) and 58 additional videos edited.
Updates and Highlights
• The development of the Pleasantville OLC studio is underway. Last month we began installation of the TriCaster and Mac Studio workstations, as well as preparing the studio for production. We are expecting to open the studio for collaborative video production in March. Stay tuned for the announcement!
At this week’s 4th Annual Pace Online Conference, I presented on the opportunities and challenges of storytelling in instructional videos. My talk was titled, “Creating Engaging Stories with Video.”
Stories – that is, stories that are only indirectly connected to the subject matter – have the potential to help students better connect with multimedia content. As David JP Phillips shares, stories can make your brain more receptive to learning. These could be personal stories or stories from your field that connect to the subject matter or lesson.
David JP Phillips presents on storytelling at a TedX event.How storytelling changes brains.
But telling stories also requires students to spend more time with our media, and that can be a challenge. I shared the story of Quibi to reinforce how even 10-minutes videos fall awkwardly between short videos (that require less commitment) and long videos that rival media choices with higher production values and well-crafted stories (well, some of the time).
I depict the “Battle for Eyeballs.”
A Call to Action
What’s the best way forward? It’s up to each faculty member to wrestle with this issue, but I challenged everyone to try to bring a story into lectures that are longer than 10 minutes.
After sharing a personal example, I asked everyone to reflect on a time or experience in their life that led them on their academic journey. I thought it would be helpful to experience this work of identifying possible stories, even though it can be frustrating sifting through memories and making connections to subject matter! And further complicating the path ahead, a professor will need a handful of ready-to-use stories to call upon over the course of a semester.
Brian shares his experience as a young media maker working with comedian Josh Kornbluth on an instructional video.
For the final part of my presentation, I reviewed the resources and services of the OLC, and invited faculty to seek our help in bringing stories into their videos.
I often waste my time scrolling my project timeline while editing my videos.
Let me share some quick tips and tricks for staying organized while video editing.
1. Choose the best software:
The first step toward enhancing your video editing process is to pick the best software for you and your work. They usually include everything you need to make standard video edits, but you may prefer one over another due to its usability, digital interface, and features. The key here is to select what works best for you and your editing style rather than the most advanced video editing program available.
2. Follow the 3-2-1 Rule:
Video editors using any program should obey the 3-2-1 rule. Keep three copies of everything you create in at least two different locations, one of which is physically separated from the others.
3. Edit for a story:
Go beyond the basics of removing unnecessary footage and rearranging clips to make your film aesthetically pleasing and dramatically compelling in order to generate the appropriate emotions and effectively convey your intended message. Instead of just adding a bunch of effects to impress your viewers, use your practical and technical knowledge to accomplish this.
4. Managing an efficient work flow:
Organizing your projects and files in folders that you can reuse is one way to improve your workflow. Make a home for your projects, footage, audio files, images, and graphics, and add more subsections and folders as needed.
5. Use keyboard shortcuts:
Speaking of buttons, keep in mind that most editing programs allow you to perform a variety of in-app editing functions using keyboard shortcuts.
6. Color correct your clip:
Most editors do two things: color correction (to ensure that your footage’s colors are consistent in each scene) and color grading (to give your film a different look). Both are required if you want the majority of your scenes to look as realistic as possible, or if you want to distinguish certain scenes from others, such as when using presets like sepia and monochrome on “flashback” scenes.
7. Add texts and graphics:
Adding text and graphics to a video can help to improve its overall appearance and draw attention to important information. Texts and graphics can help to convey a message, set the tone, or add context. They can also be used to emphasize critical things, introduce new topics, or provide useful visual aids. Text and graphics can also help to make a video more engaging and entertaining.
With the Online Learning Center opening in late January 2022, faculty from across the University have developed video and related media for their courses and projects. In total, OLC staff have held 245 hours of consultations with faculty, and collaboratively produced 444 videos. With each video averaging about 8 minutes in length, this is over 62 hours of video. It was a great first year, and we’re looking forward to new and diverse projects in 2023! See OLC Monthly Updates for project highlights (and video examples). As always, please contact OLC staff with your questions, ideas, or production needs.
It’s a great time to plan for your spring courses. We hope you will contact OLC staff with question, ideas, or production needs!
Media Production in December
• 29 hours of consultations with faculty in Dyson, Education, CPH (Health), and Haub Law.
• 44 videos produced (461 minutes total) and 21 additional videos edited.
Updates and Highlights
• The OLC hosted its third HEASA Capstone event, where masters students present their original work and research in the field of Higher Education Administration.
• Video production continued for the Paralegal Certificate program with modules on legal writing.
HEASA students present their work to their colleagues. The event was streamed (via Zoom) and recorded for the Pace University Institutional Repository (maintained by the library).
He is currently a Student Assistant and began working in November 2022.
At Pace University, he is pursuing his master’s degree in Social Media and Mobile Marketing. He is extremely enthusiastic about creating content for social media, particularly LinkedIn, and aspires to work for major media companies.
He also has a creative eye and enjoys designing innovative posts and thumbnails.
At the OLC, he assists with all aspects of video production and is also learning video editing with Adobe Premiere Pro.
Check out his new tutorial video, in which he explains the basic fundamentals of editing.
A screenshot from Professor Strahs’ Panopto “session.” We continue to develop and improve this rich multimedia format.
It’s a great time to plan for your spring courses. We hope you will contact OLC staff with question, ideas, or production needs!
Media Production in November
• 44 hours of consultations with faculty in Dyson, CPH (Health), Haub Law, and Lubin.
• 53 videos produced (587 minutes total) and 12 additional videos edited.
Updates and Highlights
• This month we’ve begun supporting the Pace Performing Arts department with production support for their BFA Senior Showcase performances. OLC staff filmed the sessions where PPA faculty provide creative and technical direction to the students throughout the semester. We hope to continue this work with the spring 2023 showcases!
• Professor Strahs (Dyson/Biology) continued creating videos using Panopto’s “sessions” format for his advanced biochemistry curriculum (see image above). With this format, he is able to annotate his slideshow presentation while he lectures. We simultaneously record his live screencast so students have more options when viewing his lecture in Panopto.
• Production for the Paralegal Certificate Program continued with modules on Legal Research and Legal Technologies.
• Brian has been working on developing studio plans for Pleasantville. Stay tuned for this new OLC location to open mid-spring!
OLC student assistant Smit published his first “OLC reel,” now playing on the OLC showcase display (6th floor, 1PP). On screen, we get a glimpse of a Performing Arts’ Senior Showcase session in the OLC. Nice work!
An image of a future learner as imagined by the Ed3DAO group, titled “Ed3 Educators NFT mock up with compass & holo glasses.”
I attended many virtual sessions of the “Accelerate 2022” conference hosted by the Online Learning Consortium (another “OLC!”) – my first time attending any OLC conference. The OLC is a non-profit organization that supports a range of professional development and quasi-academic (more white-paper than full research) offerings. In its own words:
OLC is a collaborative community of higher education leaders and innovators, dedicated to advancing quality digital teaching and learning experiences designed to reach and engage the modern learner – anyone, anywhere, anytime.
Below are the top themes I took away from the conference, with an emphasis on how educational leaders can continue to evolve university services.
Connect Learning to Employment
This was a major theme of Amelia Parnell’s keynote talk on “How Online and Blended Learning Can Accelerate Student Success.” She highlighted the continuing focus on the future of the “Learning and Employment Record” (digital portfolios, badges, etc.). She also noted the importance of Prior Learning Assessments (“PLAs”) for attracting and graduating students (students using PLAs completed their credentials at a 20+% higher rate).
Support Faculty Video Development
OK, we’re preaching to the choir here, but it’s still important. Not unexpected from a conference about online learning, but several sessions highlighted the importance of adding original video to courses. A session on “Building Hyflex Programs through Cross-functional Collaboration” looked at how faculty were more successful at deploying multimedia with university staff support. A session on “The Influence of Instructor-Generated Video Content” highlighted how using videos to communicate class expectations led to better a faculty experience with students throughout the semester.
Teach with Confidence
I enjoyed learning some public speaking and performance tips from Jory Basso (founder of Hybrid Health and Fitness, an integrative health clinic in downtown Toronto). Here are his “9 tips for public speaking:
Change with The Internet
In a “Technology and Future Trends” session, speakers discussed structural changes to the web (i.e., “Web3”, “Web 3.0,” etc.) and possibly implications and possibilities for educational institutions and learners. I’ll let this one speak for itself:
The internet is changing and online learning will necessarily change with it. Terms like “crypto,” “blockchain,” “NFT,” “DAO,” and “Web3” are possibly not entirely new to you, but do you know what to expect when these stop being theoretical and become infused into the very bedrock of online learning? Join our panel of experts and educators to help answer questions like “What problem does this solve?,” “What value does this add?,” “How does it work?,” and “What does it even do?”
The panel was comprised of 4 people who are all involved in a “decentralized, autonomous organization” called Ed3DAO. While they were certainly selling their Koolaid, they also had some interesting ideas about the future of credentialing using blockchain technology.
The future-leaning agenda for the session. I appreciated the AI-generated art that the presenters used to illustrate their slides.
Build Your Platform
And not just figuratively: a session on the “Barnes Foundation’s Digital Learning Platform” was about designing, engineering, and testing their new learning platform. As they are in the art education space, the Foundation built a unique web-based experience for remote learners to experience art education as taught by Barnes educators. The ability for learners to toggle between “self-exploration” and “instructor-led exploration” was very slick.
A look at the Barnes’ platform design process.
And more!
“Global Online Academy is a nonprofit organization that reimagines learning to empower students and educators to thrive in a globally networked society. Our consortium is composed of member schools from around the world who are committed to preparing their communities for the future… All of our courses are designed to support the development of GOA’s six core competencies.”
That’s what I was able to glean from this experience with the Online Learning Consortium community. After many years of seeing OLC publications, this was my first time attending one of their conferences. In whole, it wasn’t particularly strong on research, theory, or business. It was more like a passing glance at some current issues in the vast field of online education. I’m glad I was able to engage with this content, but based on the overall quality of the conference presentations, I’m not sure I would attend again anytime soon.
