Electronic whiteboard‐style instructional videos on the cheap (720.4)

Abstract

Instructional videos are an increasingly popular format for delivering content to students. Although there are a variety of medical subjects available, we found that few existing videos were relevant or appropriate for teaching first‐year medical students. Moreover, we wanted our own institution to be well represented in any collection of videos that we recommended to our class. Among various presentation strategies that we explored, the electronic whiteboard‐style video popularized by the Khan Academy is a good match for material that our faculty might traditionally present by freehand drawing on the blackboard, such as simple diagrams or the derivation of equations. We found that we could develop such videos by taking advantage of relatively‐inexpensive hardware and software. Each video was planned using traditional storyboarding techniques and storyboard templates available for free online. We then recorded the narration digitally using inexpensive headsets and free software such as Audacity. With the recorded narration and storyboard as a guide, video of the drawings was recorded using digital tablets, drawing software such as Paint or SmoothDraw, and screen‐capture utilities such as Expression Encoder or Screenr. The hardware and software were inexpensive, often already in use by faculty, or were freely‐available for download. Finally, modestly‐priced video editing programs such as Camtasia Studio or CyberLink PowerDirector were used to join the captured drawings and audio into a single video, which could then be posted to a learning management system for streaming to students. Our assessment strategy consists of comparisons of examination performance on concepts covered in these videos with previous years that covered the same material in traditional lecture or small group. These comparisons are supplemented with pre‐ and post‐instruction surveys of student opinion on the effectiveness of the videos in improving their studies and interviews with participating faculty.