Mindset
I look and sound different on video
Yes, you look different on video than in the mirror, and yes: your voice sounds different on a recording than it does when you speak. We all experience those feelings and apprehensions. But, that is reality, and I hope it doesn't make you uncomfortable. You will get used to seeing yourself on video and hearing your voice as others hear it.
What if I make a mistake?
I saw a recent Twitter thread discuss this question, and I was surprised at how many academics came down on my side: don't re-record the video. Just acknowledge the mistake, correct it, and move on. This is a great approach for at least two reasons: it humanizes you to your students, and it is important for them to see that teachers aren't perfect. In fact, we can use that opportunity as a "teachable moment." When this happens to me, I often pause, and then explain to students how/why I made that mistake, how I noticed it, and how to correct it. This exemplifies the second reason not to avoid making mistakes in class. Part of education, I hope you'll agree, is about learning how to learn. And the learning process relies on making some mistakes and addressing them. I hope you might also take the time to read an earlier post of mine with more narrative about why it is worth embracing content mistakes you might make in the classroom.
Let me share the most memorable Reply to all of my public YouTube videos to date, because it so bluntly underscores my point about the importance (or lack thereof) of recorded mistakes:
"Even when you make an error, it makes more sense than when my professor explains it correctly." – Nick Tokar
This is a comment on one of my most-watched videos (almost 75,000 times since 2017), about three-point genetic mapping. This quote is the top-ranked of the 102 comments currently on this video, probably because that comment alone has 63 "likes" of its own. My take: even when videos have errors, that doesn't make them less impactful or useful. What does is how you, as the instructor, deal with a mistake being identified. I think it comes down to humility - and this counts in the physical classroom just as much as in your virtual classroom.
How to address mistakes indelibly embedded in videos for time immemorial
With respect to the above quote, I should provide some context, in order to set out some best (and worst) practices for how/whether to address and/or correct mistakes in your videos. This video involved a genetic analysis technique that relies on writing out and interpreting a numerical matrix (which is boring to watch in a video). So, while I was recording the video, I was flustered enough in trying to remember to look at the camera and talk while also performing the interpretation of the data that I made a mistake in a small (but critical) part of the analysis.
After I posted the video, (at the time) manually typed the video captions on YouTube, and created the Table of Contents for the video, I was really pleased. Then somebody spotted the error. I was faced with the decision of how to address my mistake - and you will, too, someday. Here was my short list of top contenders for how to proceed (in no particular order):
- Remove the video from YouTube (and perhaps re-record the video)
- Ignore the comment pointing out my error (actually, this never crossed my mind, but it was an option)
- Reply to the YouTube comment by that one viewer
- Post a written correction of the mistake in the description of the video
- Crawl under a rock and never come out (also not something that crossed my mind, but I suppose some might consider this approach)
Here's how I reasoned through my solution. 5 just wasn't an option. I also didn't like choice 3, because it would be easy for a viewer to arrive at my video and press "Play" before reviewing all of the video comments (and their responses…) - it just wasn't an "eye-catching" approach to visibly solving the problem. 2 just isn't me: I'm an instructor, and I do spend time responding to all comments on my videos; I would feel really terrible if I discovered that I had led one (and then untold others) down an erroneous path, especially when the entire point of my posting these videos freely on YouTube is to help others.
What I probably should have done, in retrospect, was choice 1 (and I still might do this someday). Initially, I reasoned that I had spent so much effort creating the video, it wouldn't be a good investment of my time re-recording it just to eliminate one mistake. And, just so you know, one thing that isn't great about YouTube in this sort of circumstance, is that there is no way to remove and replace a video and keep its same URL. So, I can't re-record the video and replace the old video with a new version. From the author perspective, this would be great, because that is one of my most popular videos, and it helps my YouTube channel attract viewers to all of my videos. If I delete the video with the mistake, all of that disappears, and the new video would start its new life from birth, essentially. Now that I have the benefit of hindsight, for this particular video and the number of positive comments it has received, I'm glad I didn't replace it with a "better" version. Instead, I opted for (by process of elimination)…
Option 4. To the written description of the video, I added a disclaimer explaining the error and how to correct it. This, I thought, was a good compromise. I was being transparent about the mistake while also keeping the video on YouTube. To me, so far, there is still one drawback from this approach: even in the video description, users tend to overlook that caveat, so I still regularly get comments on the video pointing out the same mistake.
Here is where I think humility, and embracing the mistake (even time and time again), can be a really impactful opportunity for educators. Each time a comment inquires about the mistake, I do get a little defensive in my response, and I point out that I did actually note the mistake in the video description. I think I do this to make the point that I'm not deliberately trying to deceive viewers. However, I add a positive spin for the commenters: I also note that I'm glad they were willing to comment, and that I'm impressed they were paying close enough attention to spot the mistake - that this tells me they're understanding how the analysis works. I acknowledge that they did arrive at the correct solution after all, even though I did not, and I thank them for their post.
That's the way to handle your honest mistakes. Don't blow it off, and don't cover it up. Own it, and make it a teachable moment. You'll make a huge positive impact on your students.
Edit: after writing the above, I wondered if there were other good solutions in YouTube to alerting viewers about an error at the appropriate time in the video. At present, the only solution YouTube seems to offer is the ability to insert a "card" (a clickable link to another video) at a specific timepoint. So…I just recorded a quick "erratum" video that quickly explains my mistake and the solution, and I'm advertising that video on a card that appears just prior to where I make the mistake in the original video. Through the entire video, there is now an "i" (information) button floating in the upper-right of the window, and mouseover reveals more details about the link to my erratum video:
Then, at the timepoint of my choosing (right before I make the mistake in the video), that "i" button changes to a small (hopefully noticeable) banner with text I provided:
Clicking on that button or banner (the "card") launches the correction video. You can see what that looks like in real time using this link. So, adding cards provides another approach to making additions to video content hosted on YouTube without entirely replacing it.
One final thought on admitting mistakes: I'm a teacher, and of course I've been a student, too. So, I've been in the audience when a teacher has made a mistake, and then stepped back from the (then) chalkboard, and spent minutes trying to figure out where they went wrong. And then they spent an inordinate amount of time trying (sometimes frantically) trying to right the wrong. Often, that approach just further confuses the situation.
If/when this happens to me during class, my current approach involves two steps. First, I acknowledge that I've made a mistake, that I can't see where at the moment, and that I value the students' time, so I don't want to spend more in-class time trying to fix the problem. Second, I assure the class that I will figure out how to address the problem and that I'll provide the accurate version online or at our next class meeting. My asking the class for time to reflect on the problem, to let me decide on the best way to explain how I made a mistake and how to fix it, is not a weakness. It is a strength, and it is a great way to model how to learn.
Legal
From workshops I've led in the past, I can categorize these concerns about the use of instructor-created videos into two categories: student privacy and intellectual property rights.
Student Privacy
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) controls the rights of individuals to control the release of personally identifiable information from the educational realm. From trainings I've taken, my understanding is that this includes whether a student is enrolled at a particular school. Thus, it could be problematic if an instructor posts a video that includes protected information, and it is likely (if not true) that the release of student images themselves (and perhaps even their voices) would be protected under FERPA.
Particularly if you intend to produce any "capture" videos (recorded lectures, office hours, Zoom meetings…), best practices for addressing FERPA requirements might (again, I emphasize that I am not a lawyer and not providing legal advice here!) include:
- first obtaining written permission from students to record and distribute their likeness (including audio and video)
- This does raise the obvious point of what you would do if even one student opts out of recording…would you have to stop all lecture capture at that point, or only not post videos in which that student might have orally asked a question?
- ensuring the videos are protected in a way that only other students from your course can access them
One reason I like using ExplainEverything to record in-person lectures is that the video it captures is of my tablet screen, not of the classroom. Then, it does record the room audio, but students who might ask questions are far enough from the microphone on my tablet that their questions are often audible, but I don't think they'd be clear enough to identify an individual student.
What I'm still trying to decide, because I've never held synchronous classes over Zoom before, is how to manage recorded Zoom video, which will have a video recording of the participants along with the screen names they chose. And, because I'm asking students to identify themselves with their real names, that could definitely pose a FERPA issue if the video was pirated and shared elsewhere.
It is a good idea to contact your administration to get official advice on these points before pressing "record."
Intellectual Property
Yesterday's post described the fact that any video you create can be pirated if you share it with others in any way. Legally, as the creator of the work, you own the copyright to your video. However, before you decide whether to spend time enforcing your copyright, it is worth asking yourself whether your video has monetary value and whether it is worth your time trying to leverage that value. I did not create my educational videos to make money on them (if that is even possible); I created them for efficiency. They represent tools that I believe will both 1) help me provide more on-demand resources for future students to use to learn about science and 2) help my students learn better in my classes, because I have customized the topical content and tailored the delivery to the manner in which I teach.
Let's face it: none of us are going to make money licensing educational videos. The market is flooded with them, and the vast majority (including mine) are not produced well enough to be valuable. Instead, my perspective is that my making and sharing free videos increases my visibility in the community - and that might provide me future opportunities that benefit my career.
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