Importance of educational videos and solving its limitation by teachers assistance

Many technologies have promised to revolutionize education, but so far none has. With that in mind, what could revolutionize education?


Why educational videos don't work?
1) Procrastination: Educational videos give freedom of anytime learning, but this can lead to procrastination. According to Parkinson's Law: "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion". But in case of video lectures or MOOCs there is no limit of time, so usually, we procrastinate. Limiting time to complete the MOOCs is also a bad idea, as it takes away its advantage of any time and anywhere learning.
2) Lack of a social interaction: We share emotions, feelings, discuss with the teacher, friends that come to our mind just like a true social animal and classroom brings a social two-way interaction, but it doesn't happen in case of MOOCs.
3) Answerability: No one is there to keep you accountable for finishing the course, no outward push, everything lies with intrinsic motivation or curiosity to learn.
4) Distractors: Computers are multitasking, but we don't learn with multitasking. So much information is bombarded to us, that makes us inefficient filter and creates trouble in what to learn and what not, also alluring social network sites, video games take the priority instead of learning through video lectures.

Advantages of video lectures or MOOCs:
MOOCs are invaluable resources of knowledge and are priceless. MOOCs are borderless, ability to bring home lectures of best teachers and scientists throughout the world, and learn from them, anytime anywhere.

MOOCs are borderless, ability to bring home lectures of best teachers and scientists throughout the world, and learn from them, anytime anywhere.

But the problem is you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. But here comes the teacher role.

How should teacher scaffold the whole process of learning through video lectures?

One way of doing things, when students are beginners and novice:

The teacher should watch the video together with students. Students can listen from their own computers, tablets or phones, but their videos should be in accord with teacher video streaming with the allowed margin of error. The teacher should act as an interrupter, pause the video every time a concept is explained and bring inquiry to students, question them what they have understood, asking them to explain and also helping them to increase their learning level by answering where students fail to explain or ask students to listen to the video bite again. Students should also be asked to take notes from the lectures. This will increase their attention and learning level, also notes can be used for retrieval practice later. One advantage of videos is they can pause and repeat the part of video and take the notes, which is usually not possible in regular classroom.

The teacher should act as an interrupter, and students should be asked to take notes from the lectures.

A guide for effective questioning is given in the link:

https://www.nde-ed.org/TeachingResources/ClassroomTips/Effective_Questioning.htm

But for advanced and experienced learners, separate time for discussion and feedback in presence of expert can be kept.

What are the advantages of doing so?
First, it removes all the limitations of educational videos. Secondly, it lowers the pressure and responsibility from teachers drastically. Teachers work is only to scaffold and check everything is working i.e. students are learning. Most of the responsibility is taken by videos and students themselves because students have to explain what they have understood and taken charge of their own learning.

Albert Einstein Quotes: If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Also, retrieval practice is done, which is one of the most effective strategies for learning.

First, it removes all the limitations of educational videos. Secondly, it lowers the pressure and responsibility from teachers drastically. But yes, it takes more teachers or mentors time, but that can be solved when we keep more mentors, and intermittent mentoring. 

Such classroom can remain open from early morning till midnight. 

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