Video Use in Education Evolving Beyond the Classroom

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 07/10/19

Uses of video in education. Source: "State of Video in Education" from Kaltura.

The application of video in education is evolving. Even as the practices of showing video in the classroom or making it available as supplementary course material have declined as use cases slightly from this year to last year (from 85 percent to 82 percent from 2019 to 2018 and 80 percent to 77 percent, respectively), video's application has grown for marketing and communications purposes (up from 57 percent in 2018 to 66 percent in 2019), helping students practice their skills (55 percent to 60 percent) and recording campus events (66 percent to 69 percent).

Those are a few of the takeaways from video software maker Kaltura in this year's "State of Video in Education" survey. The survey, the sixth done by the company, reflected responses from 1,400 people in education, including large numbers in instructional design and instructional technology, IT, teaching, media and administration. Kaltura acknowledged that these individuals were probably more receptive to the use of video than the typical person since they "self-selected" participation in a survey on the topic. Although the majority of responses came from higher ed, a small segment (12 percent) involved K-12. The questionnaire was run online in April and May 2019.

The use of video analytics received some attention in this year's survey. Just a small portion of schools (9 percent) tie video usage data to other information on student behavior and results "to predict and bolster student achievement." Another quarter of respondents said their instructors check to see how — or whether — the content is being viewed as feedback for improvement. A similar share (27 percent) admitted they "don't really look at [analytics] at all." The remainder don't know about the use of analytics tied to video.

Among video's uses, it continues to be popular for teaching and learning, particularly showing video in the classroom (mentioned by 79 percent), as supplementary material (74 percent), student assignments (72 percent), lecture capture (70 percent) and remote teaching and learning (66 percent).

More than eight in 10 respondents (82 percent) said they believe students are expecting more use of video in their learning experiences. And almost nine in 10 respondents (86 percent) said teachers and instructors should expect to help students learn how to use video "effectively" and allow them to practice working with video, as part of preparing for the workplace. Among the skills to focus on, advised Kaltura: basic ones, such as participating in virtual sessions and recording a video "with reasonable audio and video quality," and advanced skills, such as "intermediate editing" and combining multiple shots for "an effective narrative."

A slight majority (57 percent) said they think video will play a "major" role in personalizing learning, and another 42 percent said video would play "some part."

The top hurdle to video use was "inertia," cited by 57 percent of survey participants, followed by "lack of training," referenced by 53 percent, overall intimidation (47 percent), lack of recording facilities (43 percent) and lack of equipment (42 percent). As one respondent said, "Some staff are intimidated. Some assumptions are made by adults that all students have these skills but they do not."

Although most schools do some lecture capture, according to the results, no particular type of classroom dominates in the rankings for these presentation recordings. Eighteen percent or respondents reported that they record in "just a few large auditoriums or lecture halls" and 17 percent said they record only in "experiential classrooms." A third (32 percent) said they record in a combination of those two types of classrooms. And 13 percent said they record most classes in "new or renovated buildings." Just 7 percent said they do lecture capture in "every classroom."

The primary reasons for doing lecture capture are to "reach students we couldn't before" (mentioned by 31 percent of respondents) and to help with accessibility and address international student needs (30 percent).

When it comes to video captioning, a quarter of schools (26 percent) do no captioning, while a similar number (27 percent) do automatic captioning of "everything." The rest either caption upon request (27 percent) or caption the main video content "of our most popular classes" and handle others on request (20 percent).

The full survey report is available with registration on the Kaltura website.