Relative Advantage of Using Video in the Classroom

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There are many benefits of using multimedia in the classroom. There are also some disadvantages. I’ll address the disadvantages first, before examining the advantages offered by multimedia. 

 The first disadvantage, as anyone who completes this assignment will experience, is that creating multimedia takes significantly longer to prepare than a regular lesson. I had to type this script, then record it, then re-record parts of it to fix errors, then process it, then upload it, then finally publish it. A written blog post became a video that took three times as long to complete. A casual research of studies that discuss the impact of multimedia on students often point to improvement in achievement, but none of them suggest that this improvement is three times better. From a purely accounting of time, creating multimedia presentations may not be the most effective method to improve student achievement. 

The second major disadvantage of multimedia is that it is entirely dependent on the technology to work. From not sharing links properly (I’ve done that a few times in this course already), to wifi issues and even to a complete failure of the Internet, multimedia works great when there are no issues of technology. Just ask a teacher how their plan for using multimedia in their classroom while a substitute was there went. Invariably, something went wrong, and the lesson didn’t happen as planned. Multimedia failed, and students did not learn what the teacher had hoped that day. 

With that being said, however, there are several advantages to adding multimedia material in your classroom. According to Jones & Cuthrell, multimedia allows the pairing of visual, audio, and text, which access different processing parts of the brain in both hemispheres: “The brain’s left hemisphere processes language thereby enabling learners to process dialog, lyrics, and plots. The right side of the brain is used to process nonverbal input such as visual images, color, sound effects, and melodies. Video also taps into the human brain’s core intelligences which are verbal/linguistic, visual/spatial, and musical/rhythmic” (Jones & Cuthrell, 2011, p. 77), which creates multiple cognitive pathways and improves the odds of retention. 

Multimedia is most effective when they are combined with text and other activities. Using multimedia such as interactive videos that require active input on the part of the students through Edpuzzle or Playposit, for example, helps keep the attention focused and holds the student responsible for the information being presented. This helps students move from passive consumers to active participants, and increases engagement. In their study, Sykes & Emma reported that “students using video in that study reported they felt like they had a stronger grasp of the theory than did the traditional students. When made to apply the skills learned from the videos, the students using video in the study performed better as a group than the non-video students” (Sykes & Emma, 2012, p. 78). 

Another advantage of multimedia is that, according to Jones & Cuthrell, it possesses “the ability to grab students’ attention, create anticipation among students, and increase memorized content among other potential outcomes” (Jones & Cuthrell, 2011, p. 77). 

 Multimedia must be effectively crafted, however, to have the maximum educational impact on students. In a video presented at ISTE University in 2020, Michele Eaton, author of The Perfect Blend: A Practical Guide to Designing Student-Centered Learning Experiences and Director of Virtual and Blended Learning for the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township in Indianapolis, presents several elements of effective multimedia presentations, with an emphasis on video. The first element she presented was not reading the same text that is present on the screen in the video, as this duplicates the information tracks a student’s brain needs to comprehend. This affects the cognitive load and leads to reduced overall understanding and processing of the information presented: “When we do that we actually see a drop in comprehension and retention by 79%” (ISTE U, 2020). 

Michele Eaton also suggests that teachers should show their faces. Using two devices, teachers can start recording a Zoom presentation or a Google Meet, join in with the second device in mute and silent mode, which allows them to display their face in one corner while showing there presentation on the main screen, whether it be another video, a file or browser from their computer, or a paper from their document camera. She points out that “mediocre video with okay lightning, with your face in it and your voice is always going to be a hundred times better than some overprocessed videos on Youtube, and that’s because students want to see you” (ISTE U, 2020). 

Her most important suggestion is to ensure that videos teachers create for their students are short: “Under five minutes is going to be optimal. Anything longer than that and it starts to become difficult to really focus our attention. It becomes a lot of information that’s difficult to process,” affecting the cognitive load and once again decreasing retention (ISTE U, 2020). 

In conclusion, if you overlook the amount of time needed to create multimedia material for your class and potential issues of technological malfunctions, multimedia makes for a great addition to a teacher’s arsenal of tools to help students achieve. 

References 

ISTE U. (2020, April 29). Multimedia in online learning: Part 1 [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6Ipc5XXTxA  

Jones, T., & Cuthrell, K. (2011). YouTube: Educational potentials and pitfalls. Computers in the Schools 28(1), 75–85. https://doi-org.libproxy.boisestate.edu/10.1080/07380569.2011.553149  

Sykes, R., & Emma, T. (2012). The impact on student learning outcomes of video when used as a primary teaching tool in the Internet hybrid classroom. Annual International Conference on Computer Games, Multimedia & Allied Technology, 77–80. https://doi-org.libproxy.boisestate.edu/10.5176/2251-1679_CGAT11