When you partner with Miami Online, you gain access to our award winning media professionals. Video and multimedia increase instructor presence and enhance the overall student learning experience. The media you create and curate will reflect your personality and expertise, but even more so, it will provide your students an opportunity to engage with your content in a way that text alone can’t replicate.
What can I do with Video?
Let’s identify what your students need from you in order to learn the material and successfully meet the learning objectives. Think about where they would benefit from seeing you demonstrate a process, work out a problem, walk through a diagram, or set up an intricate scenario. Your knowledge and experiences are vital to your course and sharing real-world examples can be very powerful. We can help you communicate those experiences in creative and captivating ways.
Important: videos should be presented in manageable chunks of 10 minutes or less for maximum effectiveness.
Media Options & Ideas
Your professionally-produced Miami Online videos will be created in advance and reused over multiple iterations of the course. Typically these videos consist of a subject matter expert (SME) on camera with supplemental visual elements such as slides, graphics, images, and video. But they can also include demonstrations, interviews with guest speakers, and tours of a physical space.
This type of video is what we like to call “evergreen” because you leave out specific references to the season or module number, and in a for-credit course you leave out references to due dates and assignments. This extends the lifespan of the video.
Informal, single use media can be very effective in graduate and undergraduate classes. This can include weekly announcements or updates, clarification on points of confusion, and assignment feedback to individual students. These are videos that an instructor creates throughout the semester to communicate freely with current students. They may be of slightly lower production quality as they are produced quickly and used only once. Visit our Creating Videos for Instruction page to get information on tools and tips for DIY media development.
In general, Lecture / Discussion courses will have a higher proportion of evergreen, produced material. Activity / Experiential courses may have fewer videos overall and use mainly informal recordings that reflect activity / experience sites or just-in-time advice for students. Visit our Course Structure page to evaluate your course.
Media Production Process
Miami Online faculty and subject matter experts will always work with one of our dedicated learning designers (LDs). Once you and your LD are ready to produce media content, you will be connected with a video producer to guide you through the production process.
| Pre-Production | Production | Post-Production |
|---|---|---|
| 3-4 weeks | 1-6 weeks | 4-8 weeks |
| Plan and prepare. Write scripts, notes, or design slides. | Record footage in studio or on location. | Our editors combine footage with high quality graphics and images for a professional final product. |
Note: this is the average time it takes to create course videos. Your content may take more or less time, depending on your availability and the needs of your course.
After all videos are approved and finalized (at least 30 days before the launch date), they are sent off for closed captioning. Completion of course build and design quality review also occur at this time.
How to Tell a Great Story
The 6 Fundamentals for Storytelling in eLearning
- Know your audience.
Develop the persona of your learner and really get to know that person. Answer questions, such as: What context will they most relate to? What language feels familiar to them? Then, craft your narratives to resonate with the learner. - Use a structure.
A solid, logical structure is part of what makes stories stick in our brains. All stories share a few common elements. They include:- a beginning or hook,
- rising action where the central conflict emerges,
- a climax or the peak of action; and
- the resolution where the loose ends of the story are tied up.
- Appeal to emotions.
When we read stories, we experience the emotions of the stories as well. Story elements like character, conflict, and action help stories appeal to emotions. Without these elements, stories aren’t interesting or “sticky” enough. Make use of conflict, challenge, tension, and the corresponding resolution to help your learners resonate with your stories. - Intensify the story with visuals.
Visuals break up the text and provide another avenue for learners to engage with the content. For storytelling, visuals can reinforce key concepts, help learners make emotional connections, and keep learners engaged. Try adding illustrations, photographs, videos, or animation throughout your course to back up the learning objectives of the story. - Make the stories relevant to the course.
The story must relate to the learning objectives of the course in order for it to have the effect you want. - Pay attention to detail.
Strong, vivid details make stories come alive for the reader. Details help readers connect to the story and give the story credibility. When your learner creates a mental image of the story, it activates the brain and deepens the impact of learning.
Here is a story about… storytelling:
