We usually count on our wonderful instructional designers (IDs) to help us create multimedia, and we're happy to do that for your college or faculty (even if the rest of the course is built!) But sometimes our faculty need information or instruction on how to add in their own multimedia. Oftentimes, just the thought scares them .. I hear "I'm not a video editor! My son does that, but not me! What is CapCut? I don't know how to edit! Do I hire someone? AHH!" Fear not, there are some simple things you can do with video multimedia that your students will appreciate.

Video is extremely common. People under 22 spend more time watching video content than any other generation, and the soon-to-be college entrants, digital natives like my daughter, are prolific at it and get bored with written material. That doesn't mean we modify everything to suit their needs as they DO need to learn to read! But, adding in video content can engage even a learner who learns best by reading and make your course more interesting. Don't be afraid to show your personality. Many of my colleagues take, and retake, their videos until they are.. well, bland, boring, content-only, and seem like they are read from a script. It's okay to be excited, excitable, to show your personality and to even share stories or examples from your own life in your video. This humanizes the classroom and is important to do. Students often ask to see our faces (or wish we would, but won't ask) in live sessions, and it's not dissimilar in video content. We can use audio only, and some people have significant reasons to want to do that, but the engagement isn't the same.

Be sure your lighting is good. You don't need to invest in ring lights that influencers use, but use bright lighting without too many shadows or distractions in the background. Speaking of background, keep it professional. If a dog walks in the video, that's endearing, don't stress about it. If you have a sink full of dirty coffee mugs in the background, you may wish to clean that up first. You don't need special equipment, just your standard mobile device will work just fine - or a laptop with a camera. I like the Lumina camera, a iPhone, and Camtasia to record videos. I export them into MP4 format and then store them on a drive for future use.

Speaking of format - remember that we have 10-50 notifications on our phone, on average, per hour. Our desktops aren't much better. We used to have three minutes in marketing to catch someone's attention, now we are lucky to have 30 seconds. Keep it pithy. I try to keep my learning-based videos to 3 to 7 minutes and my introductory videos for new units to 1 minute or less. If you are using a tool that allows you to show a presentation with your face at the same time, try a tool like Loom. This is very helpful for showing your engagement while also presenting your best work and documents to students.

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