We had some good success with our Blackboard 57 Second Tips of the Week videos. They were short. Specific. Easy to watch. Useful information. Early on they were very much “click here to do that” but they evolved into some that included some soft instructional design tips and general web tools.
We sent them out each Monday for a while till we ran out of enough ideas to keep them up weekly. But the faculty that got them each Monday morning for those months really liked them. It was successful.
Here are the 43 we made before we moved from Blackboard 8.whatever to Blackboard Learn.
When Yavapai College moved to Canvas we had hopes of redoing the short videos targeting the Canvas LMS and intentionally including more pedagogy within each “tip.” We never got it going. I never got it going. But we had a name for them if we ever created them! “Canvas Cookies!” A memorable name if ever there was one.
As I have said many times before, the whole idea came from watching the amazing Jonathan Finkelstein and his “Real Time Minute” videos. I loved that he would be in these interesting different places and pull the qualities of the location into his message. To me, in 2007, they were talking about including synchronous activities in the otherwise timeless, asynchronous online space. I was inspired because they shared a better version on the online experience and how to do it. I still am inspired. Thank you Jonathan. Thank you for not just the “what” you told me, but how you shared it with me.
Here are a number of his videos and you can figure out how to find more. Great work!
Up here in Washington I have started some drafts to share with colleagues of what will be the Canvas Cookies. One is mostly just strait screenshots, the other has an introduction of sorts that I hope to be able to add to many of the Cookies. I’d like to add the human person in the video, in locations that might align with the content discussed, and also include more rationale for the “why” we might use the tools.
So here you go, a couple of the early drafts. We need to work on leveling the audio in the final versions ( and I have to frickin open my eyes or wear sunnglasses) caption them, and add credits. But you can see the difference between one with some “live” person added and one without.
Canvas Cookies
elearning one bite at a time
We hope to have several ready to launch for the fall semester and send them out to faculty every two weeks. That is the current plan anyway.