Videos in STEM courses: A 21st century tool in higher education

The call for actively engaging students in the STEM classroom has increased to a clamour in recent years – in the field of biology, this is reflected through the call for student-centered learning in the 2011 AAAS Vision and Change document (http://visionandchange.org). The flipped classroom is arguably the most student-centered and interactive of the various active learning approaches. Central to this type of course are the instructional videos that students watch before class. While the concept of a flipped class may be of interest to many, the need to create these videos is often the perceived obstacle that prevents adoption of a flipped approach. Outside of the flipped classroom, there are a variety of other uses for instructor-created videos. In this presentation, we will discuss how we have incorporated instructional videos, lecture capture and screencasts in our flipped, blended and non-flipped courses. Participants will learn how simple these videos are to make and disseminate and will hear about the various types and uses of instructional videos. They will have the opportunity to debate the pros and cons of possibly the most controversial of instructional videos: lecture capture. Many dental and medical schools have been recording their lectures for years, yet this practice is not common in STEM education: why? The session will end with participants brainstorming possible uses for their own courses. In a follow-up workshop, we will provide hands-on experience to help participants make their own short instructional videos