TED-Ed: Using and Creating Customized Educational Video Lessons

Introduction

Many UMUC courses, such as those in the MBA program, are integrating videos in the Conferences or Course Content area of the WebTycho classroom from online resources such as TED and YouTube. By adding videos to the classroom, students may become more engaged with the learning material and can learn at their own pace. In addition, faculty are able to reach a variety of learning styles as well as use video to explain difficult concepts to students. But wouldnt it be that much more beneficial if faculty could add short lessons around a TED or YouTube video as supplemental material to further enhance and enrich student learning?

This article introduces another resource that faculty can use in building upon their online course materials, providing some background about the new TED-Ed site and its educational videos, how to flip a lesson, and an opportunity to submit your own educational videos to TED-Ed.

About TED-Ed and Its Video Lessons

TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) is a medium where some of the worlds greatest leaders and experts share their knowledge and ideas through videos and talks. TEDs philosophy is Ideas Worth Spreading.

In April 2012, TED launched a new platform, TED-Ed, alongside its existing Web site. TED-Eds primary goal is to provide quality educational videos and lessons that are taught by educators through Lessons Worth Sharing. This portion of the site includes short animated videos created for high school students and lifelong learners that are appropriate for higher education. The short videos are not intended to replace full courses or curricula but rather to be used as supplementary materials. Although the site is still in beta, it currently has over 100 videos, with more than 10,000 customized lessons based upon those videos. TED-Ed expects the site to continue to grow due to the practice of flipping. Users may repurpose, or flip, videos into customized lessons, and other users may then again flip those lessons into new lessons. (Flip teaching is a method of instruction in which traditional classroom lectures and homework assignments are reversed, or flipped. It is repurposing lecture time in which faculty provide interactive content, often video or other media, for students to review outside the classroom and which then serves as the basis for homework, exercises, projects, or discussion in the classroom.)

The sites collection of short animated videos, each no longer than 10 minutes, are recorded by educators and professional animators. Each video is accompanied by a short lesson composed of multiple-choice and open-ended questions that students can answer after watching a video. The lessons are geared to help reinforce students learning and comprehension. Faculty can take advantage of the free ready-to-use video lessons at TED-Eds Web site (http://ed.ted.com/). Many videos are also available on the YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDEducation.

ted-ed-screenshot1 Visitors to the site can browse videos by either serieswhich list the videos by themesor by subject. One can also view the Best Flips. These lessons are created and nominated by users and are selected by educators and TED-Ed as being exceptional. The lessons surrounding the videos are built around three elements: Watch, Think, and Dig Deeper. After watching the video, students may click on the Think element to view a series of multiple-choice and open-ended questions to help them with their comprehension of a video and to use their critical thinking skills. If students answer any multiple-choice question incorrectly, they can select a video hint link to direct them back to the appropriate place in the video that provides the correct answer. Finally, Dig Deeper is an area in which faculty can provide additional topical resources, such as Web links, readings, and activities.

How to Flip a Lesson

Faculty can customize and contextualize lessons surrounding existing TED-Ed videos or completely recreate a new lesson from scratcha process known as flipping a lesson. To flip a TED-Ed video, faculty just edit the items in the three elements surrounding the lesson. They can change the title of the lesson so that it is relevant to a particular course; provide students with instructions about the lesson surrounding the video; keep, discard, or completely change the quiz questions; and add their own open-ended questions. Logan Smalley, director of TED-Ed, has noted, By introducing more customization options, the platform puts power into the hands of educators, converting a passive academic experience into a more active and engaging one.

The most powerful and exciting feature on the platform may be the ability to flip any YouTube or other useful educational video into a lesson and embed it, or faculty may record and upload their own videos and turn them into lessons that will be featured on the TED-Ed site.

Faculty may publish a lesson to a private, unique URL for students. Students will be able to log in, track, and save their lessons and recent activity. In addition, faculty can monitor and assess students progress and participation as they complete the assignments. Students also have the option of being anonymous by not logging inalthough if they choose this route, they will not be able to track and save their lessons. Depending on a lessons purpose within a course and the desired educational outcomes, faculty may wish to have students activity on a given lesson be identified or anonymous.

Submitting Videos to TED-Ed

TED-Ed encourages educators to get involved by creating short videos and lessons of their own work to be posted on the TED-Ed site. Faculty can nominate other faculty, themselves, or talented animatorsor they can just suggest a lesson.

For each submitted and accepted video, TED-Ed pairs the educator with professional animators to produce a high-quality, short, and engaging educational video and lesson. All of this can be done directly on TED-Ed Web site through the Get Involved section at http://ed.ted.com/get_involved.

Conclusion

The new TED-Ed platform has many benefits for faculty and students. Faculty can add TED-Ed video lessons to their classrooms, flip and customize lessons, or upload their own videos and turn them into lessons. They can also track student activity and performance. Students interact with the video lessons and receive immediate real-time feedback on videos they watched. They can proceed at their own pace by stopping and rewinding the videos and taking the accompanying quizzes at any time.

Faculty at UMUC already use TED, TED-Ed, and YouTube videos for educational purposes in their classrooms. TED-Ed now offers additional teaching and learning opportunities for faculty and students. Faculty can create contextual lessons around the videos they assign to their students and reinforce student learning. The lessons encourage students to think critically about the content, which also allows them to become more actively engaged in their own learning process.