Virtual sessions + Edpuzzle make great asynchronous learning opportunities

There are a lot of us out there planning for ways to teach our students when we’re not in a room together, and I wanted to share one way to do that.

The Virginia Association of Journalism Teachers and Advisers recently shared publicly a collection of over 100 virtual sessions recorded by advisers and media professionals from around the nation. The sessions range from the basics — headline writing, finding interesting story ideas, interviewing — to much narrower topics like planning environmental portraits or writing for radio. Each session runs between about 7 and 40 minutes, and a few have accompanying handouts.

Recently, my students watched a session on interviewing by adviser Sarah Nichols from home (we are all virtual right now) and responded to questions as they watched the video. To keep them engaged and focused, I used Edpuzzle with the video session to integrate the questions I wanted them to focus on.

For those unfamiliar with Edpuzzle, it’s a great virtual tool that allows you to moderate video assignments from afar. Once students begin watching the video, they must stay within the browser window in order to continue watching. You have the option to insert multiple-choice or open-ended questions, as well as notes, in the video, and the students are required to answer them before moving forward. The free version allows teachers to upload up to 20 videos, and Edpuzzle has a deep well of video assignments already built by its users. It also integrates videos from the web well, and it’s embeddable, so it’s easy to build into your Google Classroom or LMS.

New and veteran students on my journalism staff enjoyed the assignment and asked to do another one, probably because they are really missing the conference experiences we would usually be getting ready to attend right about now.