Few teaching tasks are as loathsome as re-recording videos for your online course. 

In fact, I’ve been trying to come up with potential comparisons for about 20 minutes, and the closest I’ve come is the sinking feeling in your stomach when you survey the stack of final papers/projects that loom before you during finals week. While a root canal might be preferable to re-recording course videos, here are two practical recommendations that helped me when I set out to complete this undesirable task:

1. Creating transcripts or captions

Even though Universal Design for Learning encompasses many effective inclusive teaching practices, one of the most common practices that comes to mind under the UDL umbrella is providing either transcripts or captioning for videos in your courses. 

It’s an important best practice, but for anyone who has been tasked with transcribing – for videos, interviews, recorded events, etc. – knows that it’s a painstaking and sometimes painful task. 

But, in addition to providing increased accessibility to your course content, creating transcripts or captions for your course videos is also a great way to really cement the content you cover in your videos. Because captioning prompts really close listening, you’re digesting your content in a much more focused way.

In fact, while captioning, two really helpful thoughts occurred to me within the same video:

Thought 1: “I’ve been frustrated the past few quarters with students not really crafting their thesis statements the way I want them to. I thought I was just missing something, but I really do cover that pretty clearly in this video! I need to make sure they’re watching it.”

Thought 2: “Even though the content is here, I have a much better idea for the example that I provide. I think it’s worth re-recording this video to add in a stronger example, and then I’ll feel good about emphasizing that students watch this.”

Creating the captions for my videos provided me with a useful task that concurrently forced a good, close viewing of all of my content.

2. Treating the video like a Pecha Kucha or Ignite Presentation

When I was planning for a conference presentation proposal a few years ago, one of the proposal options was an Ignite Presentation. I was familiar with the similar Pecha Kucha format (20 images x 20 seconds apiece), but Ignite speeds up the pace just a bit more: 20 slides, 15 seconds/slide, 5-minute presentation. 

I decided to give it a try. While it was indeed a challenge, adopting my conference presentation to meet this strict format made me think that my online course videos might also benefit from attempting to use these limitations. 

Once I identified the videos to re-record, I endeavored to make them fit the Ignite framework. Of course, I didn’t meet precisely that goal, working with in the Ignite parameters helped me really focus in on the key points of each video and trim out information that wasn’t mission-critical for students. 

So, if you’re struggling to find the motivation to update your course videos, doing a little double-duty and pairing a re-record session with either transcribing/captioning or implementing a presentation framework can be a helpful way to get started.