Film School: To Spice Up Course Work, Professors Make Their Own Videos

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By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

Sometimes Edward J. Berger leaves class with the nagging feeling that some of his engineering students at the University of Virginia just aren't getting it. Maybe the concept he was trying to get across was too abstract. So he heads back to his office, films himself working through an actual problem, and posts the video to the course blog.

Most of the students tune in, even though watching is optional and the cinematic style is not the kind of thing that fills seats at the multiplex.

Mr. Berger, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has been experimenting with several new Web technologies as part of a project called HigherEd 2.0, which is supported by a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. He uses a blog, he has tried wikis (communal programs that let students edit one another's work), and he records his lectures and offers the recordings online for review. But he says the most effective aspect of the experimental teaching project so far has been his "video solutions."

Instead of a talking head, these videos show a talking pen. In most of them, Mr. Berger writes out the answers to problems on the screen of his tablet PC, while screen-capture software records the action. As he writes, he narrates his thought process, and a microphone attached to his computer picks it up to provide the video's soundtrack.

Mr. Berger is not the only professor making movies. Faculty members at other colleges have recently begun creating homemade videos to supplement their lectures, using free or low-cost software. These are the same technologies that make it easy for students to post spoof videos on YouTube, but the scholars are putting the tools to educational use.

"We're finding that students these days are more visually inspired," says Charles M. Krousgrill, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University who is also creating video solutions as part of the HigherEd 2.0 project.

The professors say that students tune in to the short videos more often than they look at the recordings of lectures. After all, the students already sat through the lectures once (the professors hope). "It's like a professor on demand," says Mr. Krousgrill.

Stuart Ogle, a junior at Purdue who was in Mr. Krousgrill's class last term, says he has watched some of the video solutions when he did not fully understand a concept. He watched them late at night, when no teaching assistants were available.

"You can't answer every question through a video, but to have the extra resources is certainly vital to getting a good grade and understanding," he says.

Mr. Krousgrill says he can create a solution video and get it online in about an hour. But he says it will be a challenge to persuade professors who are unfamiliar with making videos to get into the act.

"We don't think it's that much more cost and time, and we think it's worth it," he says.

Indie vs. Studio Films

The early adopters of the concept are those with an interest in technology and those with a creative streak.

Laurie E. Iten, an associate professor of biology at Purdue, has created a series of animated videos for her biology laboratory class that use characters similar to those in the TV comedy South Park. She calls her characters the "lab brats."

"There's no reason why we have to teach a class that's dull," she says. "My course is harder than heck, but we have fun."

Ms. Iten now has students watch the videos instead of attending the lectures that she used to give before each lab exercise.

"They like the idea of being able to do it right before the lab or on their own schedule," says Ms. Iten.

Companies that make software to capture course lectures are adding features that help professors make supplementary videos in their offices. One such product is Echo360, which professors can use, along with a Webcam, to make videos to post in addition to captured lectures.

Carol A. Twigg, president and chief executive of the National Center for Academic Transformation, a nonprofit group based at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, says that her center's projects have included supplemental videos, and that they have proved to be effective.

But she disagrees with the notion that every professor should fire up a Webcam. She says textbook companies or educational-software makers should be distributing videos that good professor-videographers have already produced. "It doesn't make sense for every engineering department in the country to be doing the same thing," she says.

Some textbook publishers agree. They now offer short videos as bonus materials with their textbooks. Mr. Berger recently produced a series of 100 videos for another professor's textbook, published by Pearson Prentice Hall.

But Mr. Berger argues that using prepackaged videos leaves professors less flexible. (Although, naturally, he thinks the ones he's created for the publisher are useful.) "I've found that having the agility to be able to produce a video quickly to answer a specific problem that comes up is useful," he says.

In the videos he makes for his blog, Mr. Berger sometimes reveals that he doesn't always get the answers right the first time. He says he will occasionally take a random problem from the textbook and film himself working through it — and at times he has started with the wrong approach or mistyped a number on the calculator, leaving him scrambling to get back on track.

He says his students learn more that way: "It's very real, and it gives students tips on how to develop their own problem-solving skills."