YouTube and Video Quizzes

It is fruitful to consider Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Bloom & Krathwohl, 1956) when employing video or any media in the classroom to maximize the intentionality of teaching and learning. The use of video for demonstration or modeling corresponds well to Blooms levels of Knowledge, Comprehension, and Application; while case studies offer a chance to demonstrate Analysis and Synthesis, and perhaps even Evaluation, when comparing a video to information from a text book or other content. YouTube videos can be employed to introduce a subject, such as framing the context, or simply to pique curiosity. Or, they may be shown after a principle has been taught, and now needs to be applied in a case study (a variation of this calls for analyzing what the video gets wrong). More probingly, instructors can use a video to problematize those principles which have until that point been presented as simplistic; often this takes the form of sparking debate and controversy. During the showing of any video content, professors long striven to avoid a "television response" by students, in which they enter a passive state characterized by a lack of intentional engagement with the material (Clark, 1983). To combat the tendency, instructors can require activities such as focus questions discussed before the video, worksheets that require answers during the video, intentional pauses to debrief action thus far or predict the next response, and variations in viewing method, such as intentionally muting all audio (or vice versa, listening to the audio but not the video). In addition, other instructional technology devices could be integrated, such as student response systems (clickers) to encourage attention, engagement and formative assessment. Post-viewing activities could include reflective writing (either on paper or via web log), or discussion of problems raised by the video - in class, outside of class, or in an online discussion board thread.