Hello all! Below is a fun attempt at using Animoto, an easy ed tech tool for developing your own media.

 

I kept mine on the shorter side because a lot of research points out that optimal engagement happens around the 6-minute mark and earlier. Full findings show:

“The optimal video length is 6 minutes or shorter — students watched most of the way through these short videos. In fact, the average engagement time of any video maxes out at 6 minutes, regardless of its length. And engagement times decrease as videos lengthen: For instance, on average students spent around 3 minutes on videos that are longer than 12 minutes, which means that they engaged with less than a quarter of the content. Finally, certificate-earning students engaged more with videos, presumably because they had greater motivation to learn the material. (These findings appeared in a recent Wall Street Journal article, An Early Report Card on Massive Open Online Courses and its accompanying infographic.)” (Guo, 2013)

So, I’ll try to keep this rule in mind if I wind up producing my own instructional content that involves some media. Our department has a dedicated media team, but there are always great opportunities for faculty to make their own media pieces, and I will certainly bring up this option! It’s super affordable, and I can see how my departmental budget can support a few licenses. Let’s see if this catches on at the School of Professional Studies!

 

 

 

PS: I am totally aware that the last clip of the skateboarder is from Florida, but there aren’t many stock videos of fun outdoorsy things on Long Island! 🙂 It’s kind of hard to make shopping at IKEA and walking your dog engaging! I got all of the clips for free from Videezy, which is an open source video resources that I highly recommend. Additionally, if you want to check out a really nice image feed of Long Island, take a look at #exploreliNY on Instagram. I think Instagram is accessible enough for everyone to be able to check it out and has a ton of user-made content as well 🙂

Cannot get other user media. API shut down by Instagram. Sorry. Display only your media.