One of the things I really love about YouTube is all of the amazing educational videos out there! It is a teacher’s playground. There are so many videos that address anything you could want and at all different levels of learning. They have great animations, great description, and it’s just all great. Side note: one of my weaknesses in my writing has always been a lack of word variety.
The problem is, how do we make sure that they are effective for our students? They could be sitting there not listening, watching a different video, zoning out, or just in general not engaged to try to connect it to learning. Edpuzzle is a helpful solution because it allows you to trim videos and embed questions. The questions can be multiple choice, open-ended, or you can just add in a note.
Trimming the video can be useful when you only want a portion of the video and not the entire thing. I haven’t used this as much, but it is still really nice to be able to do.
When the students come to a question you added, the video stops and the question comes up. What I really like about this feature is the students have the option to rewatch the section of video if they didn’t get the answer the first time. You can also see how many times they rewatched a section of the video. Edpuzzle also allows you to prevent skipping, so students can’t just skip forward in the video and if they leave the screen, the video stops. Which means, they can’t just have it running in the background.
Plus, if you are concerned about having enough time to actually set up videos, you can see videos that others have created. You can copy them and edit it or just use it as is. Although, I do recommend that you watch the video, check any questions/notes already there, and make sure nothing is trimmed that you like. You can also connect with teachers at your school to share ideas.
Ideas for using Edpuzzle:
- Student-paced notes-create a notes page using the video and have students go through, watch the video and fill out the notes. You can use the question feature to add a note. This stops the video at a certain point you set and whatever you put in will pop-up. I like doing this because students have something specific they know to work on and it is a great option for students that struggle taking notes. Here is an example of the notes I made to go with the cell membrane video by BOGO Biology.
- Introduction to a new topic-with so many short introductory videos, this can be a good way to have students start hearing and seeing new information. I often do this after an assessment.
- Stations-students work at their own pace to get more information on something you are working on. Not all of my students like watching videos as a way of learning, so I usually have reading available as an option for students. They can watch the video and answer questions or read and answer similar questions.
Grading and Feedback
Any multiple choice questions will be graded automatically. The only downside is if you have a question with multiple answers, you can’t adjust for partial credit. The open-ended questions will need to be graded by you, which is actually pretty quick and easy to do. You can adjust the points for each question to give partial credit. To see grades for individual videos, you can click on the video. This also gives you the ability to see how many students got each question correct or who got it wrong and what answers were picked. The analytics are actually pretty easy to navigate and you can get a lot of information, if you need it.
Edpuzzle also has a gradebook to see your assignments and grades. This screen can also be used for navigating to specific videos or check on certain students.
Class Setup
There are a couple of options when it comes to setting up classes. If you don’t want your students to have to sign up for anything, you can set up an open course. You give students your open course code and they can join with that code. They will need the code for each video they watch. An open course will still give you feedback on grades and questions missed. However, because they aren’t signing in, if you want to grade it, you need to make sure they use their actual names. Also, if they don’t finish a video before being interrupted, it won’t save their progress. I have only used this option for a class I was planning for that had a long-term sub. It was easy for the students to use and I could still see what they were doing.
I usually take the time to have them set up a sign-in. If you have multiple teachers on campus using Edpuzzle, students can have one sign-in and just add themselves to multiple classes. I make a class for each section, which can be a pain when students switch classes, but it is what works for me. To make it easier for me, I give my students a certain way to sign up, which we write down in their notebooks for them to remember. We don’t write actual passwords, but I tell them to make their password their student ID # and it works well when they forget their password because I can just remind them.
If you use Schoology, you can link Edpuzzle to your Schoology courses, which helps with sign-in issues. If you are at a Google campus, students can sign up with their Google information as well.
How have you used Edpuzzle in your class? Let me know if I can answer any questions.
