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by jerome-jh 2291 days ago
Having taken a number of MOOCs, I would say, for the videos:

- the speaker must be standing

- the tone should be light, not necessarily funny, but definitely not always the same

- there should be illustrations

- anecdotes, personal notes, interviews: maybe not at every video but at least one per chapter.

- videos should last less than 15min.

The talk must not aim to be exhaustive. Students will master the material through provided readings, exercises or quizzes. Some may only watch the videos, others will do the full course.

You will probably not have the time to prepare quality videos before the COVID-19 outbreak, so you may limit yourself to an introductory video for every chapter. You may also provide the solution for a couple of exercises in a video on the model of Kahn academy.

You should watch the making-of at the end of "Mindshift" on Coursera, by Barbara Oakley.

Note that "Introduction to logic" on Coursera has no videos but provides great tools and both funny and serious exercises.

Bad videos may spoil the course by making your students bored before they even start learning. So insist on quality, not quantity.

1 comments

Why does it feel important to you that the speaker be standing?
Standing uses body language to convey authority and confidence when presenting. I’d theorize this helps the consumer of educational content in being engaged, which is more difficult when watching videos versus being present during an in person lecture.
but if the teacher is fully shown, or perhaps the upper body (in Japanese culture, people like to see the upper body during webcam sessions, not just the head), then it would still convey authority and confidence while watching the video?

Authority seems to come in part from the actual height difference, so that could be lost if the student watches a video... But standing still gives other benefits, see https://www.genardmethod.com/blog/bid/161977/Sitting-or-Stan...

In my experience, a standing speaker is usually less boring.

B. Oakley mentioned in my post is filmed full-body and then varies the framing, half-body, head, with digital zoom. That is explained in his making-of.