Teaching in the evening, it’s often difficult to find a colleague to observe my teaching. Here I have video recorded a typical lesson in IT 521. This served a few different purposes. (1) A few learners were missing from the lesson and needed to watch it, and (2) I need a colleague to watch it and be able to run it at higher speeds to make the observation task easier. (I can’t imagine watching a whole three-hour class just to write up a peer observation!) I have also always wanted to have a lesson to share for the occasional inquiry. So here it is, week three from IT 521: Instructional Design and Technology as a Profession. The lesson covers a brief overview of learning theories – just enough to keep an instructional designer informed but not overloaded.
I learned a few things in attempting this task. Primarily, I learned that simple video editing software, at least that which ships with the basic windows machine in 2019, is oddly interlinked with photo editing software. This standard video editing software has a limit of about 35 minutes of video time that can be comfortably finalized into a viewable file (mp4). The 2:40 lesson ended up being workable only in 4 different files. Breaking them up provided more user control in the end. I do prefer separate files for sections of the lesson. Excessive scrolling is obviously tedious. Multiple files forces the viewer to open and close different parts of the lesson to take in the whole thing, but I think it also empowers the viewer to get where they want faster.
Access the video-mediated observation in four videos: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3 and Part 4. Or if you prefer, the whole folder linked here.
craig dennis howard 