Yesterday, Panopto’s UK team hosted a workshop for colleges focusing on ways they use video in their classrooms — and why this medium is so important for today’s student learners.

The use of video on campus continues to be a hot topic, and today’s educators, technologists, and administrators are eager to share notes on what’s new, what’s working, and what’s next.

Our group launched right in to how they were already using rich media at their own institutions. Common first use cases for video included creating short promotional clips about the college, lesson observation videos created by the teacher for the purposes of self-reflection, and the bringing externally-sourced video content into lessons.

As these starting points were discussed, several attendees pointed out a few important limitations in their current strategies for video in the classroom, chiefly:

• The burden on IT caused when teachers seek to provide video content in class — requiring IT staff to take in, edit, and convert a whole range of different video file formats
• The variety of issues that arise when there is no central video library where content can be stored for easy access or search
• The difficulties managing access and permission levels — and ensuring that content created, say, for staff self-reflection is viewable only to the teacher and their mentor, and not other colleagues or students

How Can Academic Institutions Overcome These Challenges To Video?

Many of these issues were tackled head-on in a talk by Benn Cass, Technology for Learning Manager at John Leggott College, who has been using Panopto to support and embed video use at his own institution.

Benn’s presentation told the story of his college’s journey with video from its initial use case to the latest innovations in teaching and learning. He outlined how the college began using video for lesson observation to help staff improve their teaching practice (something he covers in more detail in this guest blog post).

In just one example, a chemistry teacher at John Leggott College described how watching a recording of his own lesson back helped him realise that when he asked his students a question, he wasn’t leaving enough of a pause before he expected them to answer. The introduction of video in his class, then, has had a direct impact on his teaching style.

Having talked about their use of Panopto for staff self-reflection, Benn then moved onto discussing how usage of the system has developed in a whole range of emergent ways. He described how John Leggott College is now using video for:

• Student induction clips – for instance, how to use the printers
• Student assessment and moderation
• Recording performing arts classes with a dual camera set-up
• Capturing film students’ content alongside their audience’s reactions
• Creating bite-sized revision clips
• Flipping the classroom

Pervasive in the presentation was the notion that once colleges begin using video for one purpose, a whole host of new and compelling uses present themselves.

Overall, the group drove home the diversity of ways in which colleges want to use video to support excellence in teaching and learning, and it was exciting to discuss how our solution is supporting, and will continue to support, these kinds of innovations.

Ready to try video at your institution?
Panopto can help. If you work at a college and you’re interested in using video with your students and staff, sign up for our free trial today to see what’s really next for video on campus.