Jen Whiting

Although this is not new, I thought I’d post some examples of the YouTube videos I use for teaching college writing courses in one place.

Announcements through Video

I use these when I post announcements. I simply embed them in the Blackboard or Canvas announcement and email the whole thing to all of the students in the class. Here are some recent examples:

• Looking Ahead to Week Four (used during the spring break that began with the coronavirus)

• What to Do in Week One (used during a summer course)

Instructional Videos

I keep these in a single place in my course shells so students can easily find them. Here are some examples:

• How to Upload Your Paper to Blackboard

• Creating a New Document in MS Word

• The Six Key Elements of a MLA-formatted Paper

• Using and Citing Images in an MLA Paper

• How to Use Block Quoting for Quotes that are More Than Four Lines of Text

• Creating a Works Cited Page for an MLA Paper

• The Four Types of Capitalization, and When to Use Them

• There, Their and They’re (and when to Use Which One)

• Crafting a Thesis Statement (a formula if you’ve never written one before)

• Writing with Thoughtfulness

• Proofreading, the Basics

• Checking Your Word Count

Feedback Video Examples

I make feedback videos for students, in addition to adding comments into their papers. I upload these to YouTube, mark them as unlisted (so only the person with the link can see them) and then I embed the link in the Grading Feedback box in Blackboard/Canvas and also text them the video individually. Frankly, I find they respond so much more quickly to the verbal and visual feedback than to the written feedback. In YouTube, I can monitor if they’ve watched the video, and if they’ve watched it all the way through. It is typical that students will watch the videos multiple times. The record for number of views for one video is 14. And, since I know these videos are unlisted, I can be certain it is the student watching it, or someone they’ve shared the link with.

• Feedback on a Draft of an Essay

How to Create Videos Like These

Here’s a quick video I made after a presentation at the 2019 MCCC Faculty Training. I also presented this same methodology at NCTE 2019. What fun that conference was!

• Using QuickTime and YouTube to Create Videos for Your Students

Questions?

If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me; I’m always happy to talk about using videos and answering any questions you might have as you try something like this (and borrowing your ideas, too, of course!). You can reach me directly at jenwhiting@gmail.com.