Effective ways to create an interactive classroom experience

As a teacher, you strive to give your students with nothing but the best. Even though you do, it doesn’t feel complete, does it? Have you ever wondered what makes you feel that way?

Sometimes, it could be a challenge to engage an entire classroom with just a lecture. It is difficult because every student is different. You could have students of different personalities (extroverts, introverts). Some of them might not be comfortable with the usual ways of engagement in a classroom. They limit their participation with teachers and peers. It is always a struggle to try to encourage them to speak up, participate more in the class, and join in activities. As educators, isn’t it important to build a teaching process that works well for all the students? Now, the question is, how can you possibly create an interactive classroom experience for all your students?

Let us agree that every student learns differently. Few students prefer lectures. Whereas, a few might need more, something that helps them understand and retain the lecture. As a teacher, you need a medium of learning that helps all your students to understand and learn.

Did you know that the occipital lobe was one of the initial areas of the brain to develop? That means, we, humans evolved by learning through seeing and at any given point of time, visuals help us understand and learn things better.

This is where “video” comes into the play!

Importance of videos in education

Research says that incorporating videos in education helps teachers connect better with students. With all the interesting visuals, audio and text that can be added to the videos, it is easy for students to stay attentive.

“Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I may remember; involve me and I will understand” – Old Chinese proverb

Videos interest and engage all students. A recent study says that 77% of the teachers find videos inspiring and engaging when incorporated into student learning activities.

Now, you may wonder, how can you incorporate videos in teaching? For your benefit, we have put together a few ways of how and where you can implement video assignments in the classroom.

Before we get to that part,

Why choose video assignments over other mediums?

There are a few advantages that come along with video assignments. It has been proven that video assignments

Improve confidence and speech training

Asking your students to create video assignments will help in improving their oral presentation skills. Give your students a script and ask them to record a video as they practise. This way, they can watch their own videos and improve in areas where they think they need more practice. This approach increases student’s confidence as they tend to practice speech at their own pace.

Let students present information in new creative ways

Video assignments are more likely to result in an opportunity for your students to put their thinking cap on. You can ask your students to record a video explaining a lecture with an example. Rather than explaining the examples in usual ways, videos let your students bring out their creativity by acting out a scenario or creating a story. These videos are more engaging and meaningful.

Improve engagement through sharing

Some assignments may need students to present in front of the classroom. There might be a student who is well-versed with a topic/concept. But, the fear of presenting in front of the class might hurt his performance. How do you train him? Simple! Make your student deliver his speech in front of a camera. When he sees his own performance he will be able to correct his mistakes and perform better while doing it in front of the class.

Below are a few simple thoughtful ideas for using videos in class assignments.

Create video presentation

Video presentations provide an opportunity for students to re-organize time and to rethink content. This way, students can never miss something, as long as they have time to try again, they can go back.

A video presentation is essential when it comes to assignments because it enables students to add visual aids like slides or images to the presentation.

Conduct Q&A sessions

Let your students record their response to a series of questions. For instance, while your students are watching an educational video, it is a good idea to create a set of questions related to the topic. Students can go ahead to answer the questions and send a video response.

This lets you evaluate your student’s understanding of the topic.

Create tutorials and how-to videos

You can conduct tests and assess your students by asking them to create how-to videos.

For instance, in a science class, you can ask your students to explain the photosynthesis process on a whiteboard app and record their desktop screen as they do and share it with you. These types of videos help you assess and give feedback.

Bring students together for a group project

Collaborative learning is the most powerful way of learning. It gives students an opportunity to help their fellow mates and to learn to work collaboratively. You can bring together your students in small groups to plan and let them create a video project with their team.

You can ask them to create videos, record meetings, and upload documents such as pictures or audio files and complete the project. Also, say there is a stage play coming up. You can also ask your students to do a role play and you can assess their acting skills.

Keep a tab on student performance

Record any educational video and share it with your students. As they watch the video, you can keep a tab on them. You can see if your students have watched your video. You can also see where exactly your students have stopped watching and which part they keep going back to. Video analytics make you understand what interests/engages your students, which part of the video requires more explanation and where your students lose interest.

Now, how are you going to achieve all of this considering the fact that students get distracted easily with technology?

We have built a tool that lets you create videos right inside the existing class infrastructure.

Who would have thought that you could directly create videos inside the tools you use in your classroom? Yes, you heard that right! Hippo Video lets you create videos directly from inside Google Classroom, Google Docs and Google Slides.

Play your presentation as a video

You can now easily transform your Google Slide presentation into a quick video.

All you have to do is to open your Google Slides presentation and start recording the video by just clicking on the “record presentation” button. As you record the video you can choose to highlight or focus any part of the video to stress on an important point or a note.

Now, switch your students boring homework into recording the presentation to create an assignment; they can use the webcam and audio option to simply narrate over the slides as they present it.

Plan schedules with Google Docs

The most common issue faced by the students is planning their activities. You can share the video of a detailed schedule with your students by recording a document right from inside the Google Docs.

You can choose to highlight an important task or focus on any part of the video and give your comments by speaking over the document.

Create videos inside Google Classroom

Hippo Video enables you to create videos inside Google Classroom as assignments, questions and announcements.

You can directly post a video as an assignment, post or a question inside Google Classroom. Once you are done, the assignment video directly gets added to the folder for that chosen class. Students can see/access the video whenever they want. They can create video assignments by clicking on the “create video” button inside the Google Classroom.

Students can also choose to access and post an existing video from the Hippo Video library.

Record a whiteboard explainer video

Recording an explainer video online through a whiteboard is a great way to explain complex concepts and topics.

Hippo Video enables you to record your desktop screen as you explain a topic on a whiteboard. Recording a whiteboard explainer video with Hippo Video is as easy as just opening any whiteboard app of your choice and clicking on Hippo Video chrome extension to get started.

You can choose to select the mic, resolution and webcam options depending on your requirements. You can also add text, highlight, focus, erase etc as the video is being recorded. Once you are done creating the video, you can share it with your students through a link. As simple as that!

So, what does all this mean?

Creating an interactive classroom experience for your students is made possible with videos. Now that you know the tips and tricks to keep all your students engaged in the classroom. It is time to go ahead and create a classroom experience that all your students want.