Section Home

Video and Audio Recordings

Tools and Suggestions for Making Video and Audio Recordings

Video Recordings

Objectives

Video recordings can add to your presence in an online course and allow students to view--and review--instructions or explanations at a time of their choosing.

Before you create a video, consider its purpose. In this video, Heather Robinson outlines three kinds of instructional recordings you might want to make for your course: talking to your students, showing your students something, and walking them through something.

You might also want to consider using a video introduction for your course to help establish your instructional presence.

Suggestions

  • Aim to keep videos concise.
  • Encourage viewing by tying an activity and/or quiz to the video.
  • Provide any slides used as a separate file or link.
  • Include captions whenever possible (Youtube has automatic captioning, but it is based on speech recognition software, and so may contain some inaccuracies.)

Tools

We recommend Snagit if you wish to record audio and video that also uses screen capture. Screen capture video records what is happening on your computer screen, which is particularly useful for demonstrating something you want students to understand (you can walk students through how to search a database, etc.)

Snagit offers a free 15-day trial.

If you wish to continue using it, contact Wenying Huang-Stolte about a license key. 

You can also create recordings in Blackboard Collaborate or Zoom.

Other tools that offer basic screen capture and recording for free

  • VivaVideo (to record on your phone--see the App store)
  • Macs also come with iMovie and Quicktime, both of which can be used to create and edit videos.

Audio Feedback

Some instructors like to supplement written commentary with audio feedback for students. Both Blackboard and Turnitin have the capacity to record audio built into their tools: