When instructors decide to flip their classroom, one of the most common initial oversights is what to do with their lecture videos after they’ve been recorded. After all, capturing video is only the first step to successfully using it as part of your flipped classroom. In almost all cases, you’ll also need to plan for the following capabilities:
â— Video storage: Hosting your videos somewhere they can be easily, securely accessed by students and played back on their laptops, tablets and smartphones.
â— Basic editing: Providing the ability to top and tail videos, cut out portions within your video, and splice together multiple videos.
â— Search: Enabling your students to search the content of your videos in order to use them as an effective study aid.
â— Reporting and analytics: Offering you insights into how students are interacting with content.
If you want to flip your classroom, a dedicated video platform offers a robust and feature-rich solution to help you manage your content effectively. It can provide you with recording software to capture your learning materials on any device, a secure location to store your videos, transcoding capabilities, editing features, video search functionality, analytics and integration with your institution’s VLE.
Integrated video recording software
Video platforms like Panopto typically include software for capturing screen recordings, audio, video presentations and more. Panopto’s software runs on Windows and Mac desktop and laptop computers, and includes mobile apps for recording flipped class videos. Because the capture software is integrated with the video platform, all recordings are automatically uploaded to your video repository where they’re stored securely.
Video conversion
Once your video is uploaded, the video platform converts it into multiple formats so that it can be played back on any device. This process, called transcoding, is critical to any flipped class recording, ensuring that whatever devices your students are using, they can access your content. In addition to basic transcoding, many video platforms automatically detect the student’s device and connection speed. The result is a higher-quality playback experience tailored specifically to your students’ phones and tablets.
Editing
With most flipped classroom videos, instructors will typically need basic editing capabilities, such as the ability to trim the beginning and end of their videos, cutting out segments in the middle, and splicing two or more video segments together. Most video platforms include simple web-based video editors that provide this type of functionality.
Video Search
The ability to search across your video repository and inside the content of individual videos is often overlooked by those who are new to the flipped classroom. In fact, it should be one of your top considerations as you implement the teaching model. Why? Because search is one of the most valuable tools for students who need to use your recordings as effective study aids.
For example, imagine that you flip two classroom sessions each week with 20-minute mini-lectures. By the end of an 18-week term, you’ll have shared 720 minutes, or 12 hours, of video with your students. This means that your students will have a mountain of video-based information to review in the run-up to exams.
A video platform like Panopto makes this content fully searchable. When you upload videos into your video repository, every word spoken is indexed using automatic speech recognition technology. At the same time, every word shown on your slides or elsewhere on your screen is indexed using text recognition. This makes it easy for students to revise crucial content based on keyword searches.
Analytics
When you decide to flip your classroom, a video platform can provide you with video analytics, offering insights into the effectiveness of your content. The metrics being tracked may include:
â— Views: How many times was a given lecture watched by the class?
â— Unique views: How many individuals watched the given lecture?
â— Average duration: Did students watch the entire lecture, or only parts of it?
â— User viewing behaviour: Which videos were watched by any given student?
This information can be incredibly useful as you continue to experiment and iterate on your approach to flipping.
Integration with Virtual Learning Environments
Video platforms will usually integrate with the most commonly used Virtual Learning Environments. Through a straightforward configuration, both academics and students will be able to access and manage flipped classroom videos through the familiar VLE interface.
Find out more
Succeeding with the flipped classroom often boils down to having a stable, reliable and easy-to-use technology that helps educators provide a consistent, stress-free digital classroom for their students. We’ve created a comprehensive guide to preparing, delivering, and evaluating your flipped classroom, which you can download here: https://panopto.com/flipped-classroom-guide.