Instructure, a tech company that also developed the LMS Canvas, has released a beta version of Arc, a new video tool that allows users within a learning community to interact with video content – as a community of learners.
Their tool allows instructors to track student use of video content, to better integrate this content into curriculum, and to improve content effectiveness based on results.
I attended a conference session many years ago where the speaker claimed video was not an effective learning tool. While there are many instances where video is NOT an effective learning tool (the traditional lecture video is certainly one of them), I disagreed with his sweeping claim and left the session with an intent on doing research to prove he was wrong. Sadly, there just wasn’t much research out there at the time. The following year I had an opportunity to build tracking into an online educational simulation on plant disease diagnosis that included video demonstrations so we could follow which students watched the videos and see if it had an impact on their success in diagnosing the disease. While the results were ultimately inconclusive, there is certainly no argument today among educational media developers and instructional designers alike that video as a teaching tool can be very effective.
I’m looking forward to exploring this new video solution! Bravo Instructure!