60 Second Videos to Pique Students Interest
Concurrent Session 1
Brief Abstract
It's no secret that students spend more time focused on social media than in the classroom. Join me in learning how to effectively teach on social media. Grasp the student's attention with a thought-provoking but simplistic approach for even the hardest of subjects.
Extended Abstract
60-second videos to pique your student's interest: COVID-19 forced all educators to reexamine practices that have been widely used within the past decade or more. This challenged us to innovate a new design in learning and retainment of knowledge. Specifically, students continuing to learn as if they were face-to-face would not translate completely to the online forum. As an educator working in higher education during the pandemic, I saw a lack of interest, participation, and passion for being present in the virtual classroom setting. To combat these difficult situations, I started teaching on social media, specifically through TikTok. Integrating bite-size objectives that are explained in 30-60 second videos became a new tool to keep my students focused and excited about the material. Instead of simply meeting twice a week via Zoom, students now have the option of looking into the videos that are posted on my page to enhance their retainment of the material. Accounting is a hard subject in general so transitioning online was not an easy feat for any of my students. While TikTok is not used for specifically teaching, it does have the capability to capture exciting moments in time, i.e., accounting knowledge.
Well, why TikTok? I found that about 95% of my students knew of it, had it downloaded, and used it regularly. This is an app that has the capability of taking the average student's attention for hours on end for aimless scrolling. My thought process then led me to believe that if my students are going to give up valuable time to scroll through videos, why not create videos where they can actually learn.
I'm sure you're thinking, why not just use micro-lectures? Most micro-lectures tend to be 5-7 minutes in length which while it might seem that the time limit is extremely short, it is not short enough to hold the attention span of the average Gen Z student. This new type of condensed video prompts students to want to keep watching more since they are so short and straight to the point.
How is possible to make a video on objectives that take hours to talk about in a simple 30-second video? While I teach Accounting and it includes some difficult objectives, I have found that separating large objectives into smaller ones, allows students to grasp the concept better. For example, if I am talking about assets, this is a large topic to present, however, I have broken it down into, current assets, cash, accounts receivable, equipment, inventory, etc. For Math, a professor could simply do one part of the problem at a time making multiple parts or videos covering one topic. The idea is to stay within the 30-60 second time frame to give the most of the attention span from your student.
My plan is to challenge educators and design thinkers to write down one objective that is learned in their classroom or professional job. This one objective is key as it can be condensed down to even smaller objectives. I will then encourage the attendees to then break down that objective into at least three more segments while giving them an example of how accounting can be condensed. Using the tool of finding the roots of the objectives is key to keeping within the 30-60 second time frame.
Additionally, the learning objectives for the attendees are as follows:
LO 1: The attendees will break down objectives to their simplistic form.
LO 2: The attendees will learn the basic elements of TikTok.
LO 3: The attendees will realize the significance of transitioning to a social media platform as an additional resource for learning.
LO 4: The attendees will understand the tools needed to create an effective TikTok video.