5,000 videos in five years, quantity can equal quality!
Concurrent Session 6
Brief Abstract
Have you ever heard the saying quality over quantity? While most would say this is a widely accepted concept, have you ever stopped and wondered why it has to be one or the other? Why can’t it be both?
Presenters
Extended Abstract
Have you ever heard the saying quality over quantity? While most would say this is a widely accepted concept, have you ever stopped and wondered why it has to be one or the other? Why can’t it be both? Since the creation of our department, five years ago, we've stuck to this goal. How have we progressed from a small two-person multimedia team creating a few hundred videos a semester to a multifaceted multimedia team creating upwards of 500 videos a semester? Well, the answer to that is expanding our multimedia capabilities by adding highly creative and innovative people to our team, staying up to date with technology and industry trends, and gaining the trust and buy-in by our faculty, staff and administration. Our presentation will engage the audience with visual and verbal queues asking them to participate in quick surveys about their current video team size, the number of videos they produce, the type of equipment they might use, and in general some of the challenges they may be facing. By doing so we hope to help the audience members to connect with our presentation and to relate to common problems in the industry, and share how we have tried to combat them.
We wanted to refresh the perception that online videos were voiceover PowerPoints and that they weren’t as interesting as the in-person courses. To do this we needed more creative and specialized multimedia team members, including animators, graphic designers, and videographers. With the full support from our administration, we were able to do just that. A team that consisted of roughly two members doing it all in year one has grown to a team of more than 12 five years later. This team has expanded to include not only more videographers but also animators, multimedia specialists, a whole new graphic design team, and managers for in-studio and on-location videos.
Not only did our team grow in size and scope, but so did the type of work we were doing. Long gone were the voiceover PowerPoint courses. These were replaced by scripted, pre-produced videos containing many multimedia modalities to enhance the engagement, entertainment, and retention of the students. We began to utilize various videos, lightboard segments, on-location videos, and demonstration videos to help the students connect with the faculty and content. We can now increase the number of videos to be produced but also can focus on how to enhance and to increase the effectiveness and the retention of the videos to the students. Instead of showing a PowerPoint slide about a biology course teaching the scientific method, we now show a video with the professor out in a boat doing real-world applications of the scientific method with their research of dolphins. We could just have a PowerPoint slide about how a landfill works, or we now have the professor at the landfill showing the students on site the same material.
One of the most important aspects for the success and growth of our department over the years has been the buy-in by our faculty, staff and administration. Great courses don’t happen unless you have the faculty giving 110%, great courses don’t happen if you don’t have the proper staff, and great courses don’t happen if the staff don’t have the proper equipment. Yes, you can still have a great course if you have two out of three, but to truly make a number of high quality courses you need to have all three, even for video production. That being said, the faculty make or break a course, and it's their energy, personality, and compassion for the students and their subject matter that really brings a good course into being great.
No matter whether you are a part of a huge production team or a small production shop having to do it all, this presentation will help you streamline your production practices, rethink your approach to faculty, refresh your thoughts on new technology implementation, and make sure all your videos, no matter the quantity, are of equal quality.