Speaker 1: In this video, we are going to take a deeper dive into creating accessible video content for your asynchronous online courses. I want to start with a quick comment about what the word accessible means. What do you think of when you hear that word? With the word access at its root, accessible learning materials are usable for people who may interact with the world in different ways. For example, a ramp is considered to be an accessible entrance because people who move about the world in different ways can use it to enter a building. Likewise, when we add closed captions to a video, which is the narration in text form, the video is more accessible to people who may not use their hearing to interact with the video. Now, this could be useful for someone who is deaf, but it could also be useful to someone who is simply in a public place and cannot turn the sound on. In this video, we are going to think about considerations for accessibility for video content so your videos are effective for all of your learners. Another question I want you to think about before we dive in is how do you decide what content to turn into videos? Videos are great for demonstrations or micro-lectures. I use them to replace any direct instruction that I would do in the classroom. When designed to follow cognitive principles of multimedia learning, researchers have found video content can be more effective than reading for content acquisition. I do want to warn, though, just recording your in-class lectures is not a good idea for effective teaching with video. We will get into some of the research-based principles shortly that will show you why. In this video, I will focus on creating videos by recording with PowerPoint. One of the reasons I am focusing on this method is because many of you will already have PowerPoints from teaching face-to-face that you can convert to video. Additionally, PowerPoint is available with Office 365 and everyone at our institution will already have access to it on either their PC or their Mac. When making videos on PowerPoint, I tend to shy away from some of their templates because they do not effectively use space and the automated text size tends to be very small. I also add my own pictures, most of which I get online. I love to use a website called Pixabay for my images because they are free for commercial use with no attribution required. Though I am not showing them in this video, I also use some other tools for video creation. For example, if I want to draw out a math problem while I solve it, I often use an app called Explain Everything EDU. This lets me draw on my iPad and export as a video file. Newer iPads also have built-in screen recorders that you can use to demonstrate doing something within an app. When I need to show demonstrations on a computer, like showing something in a specific program or on the web, I use a screen recorder like QuickTime, which is free on my Mac, or Screencast-O-Matic, which has some editing features in the Pro version. We will begin by addressing multimedia accessibility for dual-channel learners, meaning those who will access your video with both their visual and auditory senses. There are several research-supported principles for designing multimedia that can reduce the cognitive load for all of your learners. This can be especially important when considering your students with learning disabilities. I'll synthesize some of those multimedia learning principles in the form of tips for video creation. Tip 1. Accessible video content is chunked into brief segments. While there is no exact length that is deemed accessible, consider keeping your videos to around 8-10 minutes. Shorter videos of around 4-5 minutes may be helpful for our youngest students, and longer videos up to around 20 minutes may also work for older students like college students. But if you choose to use longer videos, you may want to integrate them with other technologies that allow you to break up the video with some active learning prompts or questions throughout to help keep your students engaged. One tool I use for breaking up longer videos is Edpuzzle. I embed questions along the way that give students a chance to reflect, brainstorm, and check their understanding of the content, ultimately leading to greater engagement with the material. Let's look at a quick example in Edpuzzle. If you look in that timeline at the bottom, when you see those gray bubbles within the timeline, that's where I have embedded questions. When the student is watching the video and they get to one of those questions, the video automatically pauses for them until they answer the question and push continue. I can include both open answer or multiple choice questions. There is also an option to pull in closed captioning from YouTube. I can assign the videos to different classes with some added features like locking the fast forward button the first time they watch it and including a due date so I can check if they watch the video in time. When making your video, I recommend you make an outline first and then script your slideshow with the exact narration that you can refine as you plan to make sure your language is clear, concise, and focused. PowerPoint shows these notes on the screen as you record your video. Another tip based on Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning is to not include too much text on the screen. The images should pair with your words to reduce cognitive overload. It's always better to keep it simple and to use multiple slides to build your story. Slides are free, so don't limit yourself. Use keywords only. Keep those words near the visuals and present them at the same time so the brain can process the image and text together. This helps reduce the viewer's cognitive load and increases the chance it will retain the content from the video. If your visuals are complex, try using basic animation features to provide attentional cues to your viewers that might highlight, circle, or point to the parts of the visual you're talking about in the narration. My final tip for dual-channel learners is about the quality of your voice when narrating. A human voice with a conversational tone is recommended to improve learning with multimedia. When reading your script, refrain from trying to slow down and speak quieter just because you aren't actually talking to real people. Allow your script to let your personality shine through. Those shouldn't sound like a formal essay. And when you read your script aloud, project like you do in the classroom. This will help reduce the white noise that happens when students have to turn up the volume so high in order to hear you. Okay, let's check in. So far we have discussed four research-supported tips for creating accessible videos for your dual-channel learners in ways that embrace cognitive principles of learning with multimedia. Now let's build on this for viewers who may be single-channel learners, meaning they use either only their hearing or only their vision to access your videos. It is essential that you keep a few additional considerations in mind for accessibility for your single-channel learners. For those who access video content primarily through audio, the clarity and precision of your narration is essential for accessibility. For example, if I'm teaching about addition, I don't want to say, So as you can see, when we add these two numbers, we get a sum of 14. A person who accesses through only auditory channels will be left confused about what the two add-ins are. So tip five, before you record your video, you should do a read-through of your script to revise any ambiguous language that requires the visual for understanding. For learners who access video primarily through visual channels, the addition of closed captioning can make your content more accessible. Please note, this is different from just putting the script directly on the slides to begin with. Always having those captions posted is called open captions, and for dual-channel learners, this can actually be a barrier to learning because it increases cognitive load to see both the visuals and all those texts. This is why we use closed captioning that can be turned on and off. One of the easiest ways to add closed captioning is to upload your video to YouTube. I made a Gmail address that I use just for teaching with Google Docs and Slides. Since YouTube is associated with Google, that same email address can be my YouTube account. If you don't want your video to be publicly searchable, you can use the unlisted designation for the privacy setting. This will only allow those with the link to be able to view your video. There is an auto-transcription feature built into YouTube, so if you wait a little while – the exact length depends on the size of the video file – it will create auto-captions for you. Best practice is to edit those captions later for errors to add punctuation to increase understanding. Another option for storing videos is to request an Office 365 channel from the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology. This is a way to keep your videos within university storage and give the Office of Student Access and Accommodation Services, SAS, the ability to add captioning to your videos if needed. There are some limitations with whom you can share your videos when using this tool. However, this tool works really well if you don't want to put it on YouTube. I always recommend being proactive and adding closed captioning right away if possible because it could benefit a wide range of your students who may not be able to use their hearing to access your videos. If you do not have the time to add closed captioning right away, you can also provide your learners with a separate copy of the transcript you wrote for the video. Please keep in mind, though, this should not be your go-to solution because this is much less accessible than closed captioning. When using a transcript, learners who primarily access content through their visual channels will lose the benefit of seeing the images and narration together if they have to switch between the video and the document you provide. If this is your only option, you're better off providing a printout of the slides with the transcript below them so the learners are only looking at one single document. You can print these notes pages within your script right from PowerPoint. Following these basic tips can help you create video content for teaching that is accessible to as many learners as possible in your classroom from the start.