Good morning and warm Shalom from the UCF Judaic Studies Program where we are
still celebrating Passover. As you heard, I am Ken Hanson. I am the UCF Program
Coordinator, and I'm here this morning to share a few ideas, a few thoughts,
a few innovations, hopefully, about Creating a Video Textbook: Things
We Could Never Do in Class. And I don't really mean to say that we should ditch
that textbook, but you know, we sure can supplement. We can surely supplement.
We can learn how to free up our teaching to revolutionize our classroom and for me,
I do have to share that it's all been quite an evolutionary process.
I got to tell you. Our program, Judaic Studies, prior to the online revolution,
was on life support. As Trump would say, that I can tell you, that I can tell you.
We were struggling because that's where the student demand has been
for online courses.
And we had to adapt or sink. In fact, every one of our courses was in danger
of cancellation. We were that low in our enrollment. Our entire program might
have gotten the axe, and I was told that authoritatively until we switched online.
We had to do this. Take, for example, our most popular course that we offer.
The History of the Holocaust. What a subject. Our most popular course.
Prior to online, we were down to an enrollment of 16. In the Holocaust, 16?
The very next year after we went online, we were over 60.
We had a record enrollment, in fact.
That's the difference that it made, rescued our program, and I realized
that I need to go through IDL.
No way around it.
Of course, I wasn't exactly enthusiastic to begin with. After all, what got me into
this profession? I'm a teacher. I actually like to teach, and instead, after all my
years as a professional educator, I find myself hunched over a computer terminal,
typing on discussion boards? Yeah, I'm a teacher, not a typist.
And I remember just coming into my Instructional Designer's office, virtually
in tears, saying, "I cannot do this. It's a career killer. I know I have to but I
cannot do this. What happened to my teaching?" And I was told, "Have you
thought about creating some kind of video textbook?"
"Hmm?" And the wheels started turning, and I went from sceptic to convert
to strong advocate, and look what we did with our Holocaust course.
This is just one episode, mind you.
(Narrator) Let's focus on this fact. Between the Wannsee Conference
of January 20th, 1942, and a report issued on September 30th, 1942,
some 2 millions Jews in central Poland were murdered. We've all heard of the
atrocities committed in gas chambers and ovens in places like Auschwitz.
But how did all of this really come about?
(Music)
(Ken) It's a full 25-minute TV show, and I created 1 per week for the entire course.
Of course, we had some very good help, some excellent staff, great contributors,
and a marvelous grad student editor who did all of this.
It's all possible. And so, I took our courses, "Where no one has gone before."
In fact, things we could never do in a traditional classroom. There are
huge advantages. Now, Thomas Edison famously said, "Genius is one percent
inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration." And yeah, no matter
what we do, where we want to really excel as educators is going to take
a lot of perspiration. But you got to have that inspirational spark, that's
what saved me. Where did my one percent come from?
Well, I got to go way, way back to my childhood. What was it that got me
into this profession to begin with? How many times did we stop and ask ourselves
that question? For me, it was obvious. These guys.
(laughter)
I grew up with them. Yes, I am that old. And I distinctly remember one episode
that had an enormous impact on me when I was just a kid sitting in my
living room and watching Andy teach American History. Take it, Andy.
(Andy) Now, it happened. It happened that they had planned if the British was
ever to come over here, that they'd put a light up in this high church staple
and Paul went down there to look, and sure enough, there was the light,
burning brighter than day. Well, Paul, he jumped on his old horse and he lit
out. He didn't know where he was going, but he knew he had to go somewhere.
Oh, I wish you could have seen it. That old horse with its ears laid back and its
nostrils wide open were sucking in wind like a jet engine, feet pounding on them
cobblestones, striking off sparks. Paul was holding on for dear life and hollering
at the top of his lungs, he says, "The British is coming, the British is coming.
Get your gun, we going to have us a revolution." And them farmers come
piling out of the hay like bees out of a beehive. Minutemen, that's called.
They grabbed their squirrel guns.
(Kid) What's minutemen?
(Andy) Minutemen? They is the fellas that had to be ready in a minute's notice,
and when Paul comes screeching down the road that way, they grab their guns
and hide out behind the weeds and the walls and trees, and everywhere.
And when the British come prancing along all dressed up in their red suits,
and waving to the girls, they let them have it. Shoot, it was a sight to see.
And then it happened.
(Kid) They fired the gun.
(Andy) They fired the gun and the shot was so loud, it was heard clear
around the world.
(Cop) Oh, get out.
(laughter)
(Andy) Respect. That's the way this country started.
(Ken) I want to do that in front of a class.
Well, "How do we do this online? They don't even see us."
And that's why I walked into my ID, virtually in tears. "What am I going
to do?" "Ah, have you thought about video-ing your lectures?"
"I can't do that. What am I going to bring a video camera into my class?
That doesn't work. There's not staff to do it. All the excuses.
Create a "Video Textbook." Think how you can do this. You can do it. You can do it.
That would be just as fun as Andy, and equally fun to create. Yeah, there's
a lot of perspiration involved, but I love every minute.
I love every minute. That's what I set out to do in my profession. Look, "If Andy can
do it, what's he got that I don't got?"
And by the way, I do happen to have some theatrical background. Yeah.
I mean, why do we just take everything we did in our past and chuck it cause
now a teacher, I can't do that anymore?
And I also studied television before I went into academia. I took a master's
in television and international, intercultural communication,
and then when I went through IDL, the wheel started turning. I don't
make a very good sheriff.
But I do make a passable Sherlock, who has become my alter ego for
quite a number of my online presentations.
And look at the available technology that we've got.
Part of IDL. We had a tour of the studio, and I'm saying to myself, this is amazing.
Oh, I'm sorry. That's why I need a lav. (laughs)
This is amazing stuff. It's got to be a million dollar facility here.
Forget green screen, we got a whole green wall.
I'm just salivating even looking at it. They can put me anywhere in the world.
We've got teleprompters, amazing. Edit bay, the whole nine yards.
Look what we can do.
And I began to create, to produce, real high quality video for all of my
courses. I've created now five full courses online with weekly episodes,
literally. Every one 20-25 minutes long. They're TV shows with background music
and amazing editing.
(Music)
(George Lopez) All the students that are coming in now, they're already used to
that kind of information through YouTube, through Facebook. Anybody who's not
presenting their material with at least some video in it is not keeping up with
what the students want.
(Narrator) We can develop a prototype of what can be done across the educational
platform, and to do it theatrically, to do it professionally, and make this available
not just for our students in the university, but to the general public.
That's an amazing goal, and that's what we're after.
We want to create longterm education, and that comes from, hey, remembering
what you studied.
(clapping)
(Ken) That's the perspiration part. Really hard, isn't it.
And even this guy was impressed. I showed him what I was doing,
and his wife, just fascinated. Must be doing something right.
Unfortunately, I do run a Mac. Oh well.
(laughter)
And then we have assessments. That, for me, has become the best
part of the whole thing because as animated as I get in the classroom,
and I would actually do this in front of students face-to-face. You know
what students are like these days. Not only ramping absenteeism.
Maybe what, a quarter of the class, especially after midterms, gone.
Those who are left are on Facebook or totally zoned out, and of those
who are really paying attention, let's face it, how many actually remember
what we lecture. And studies have been done on this. What is it? 10% or less of
what we actually hear we actually recall. And for me, the gold standard.
That impossible dream of education would be that all of my students would pay
100% attention to everything I teach.
(clears throat) Dream on. But you know, we can actually get there now because
every week, I've embedded a quiz into Canvas, and it's on some detail that
I covered in my online TV show, my lecture. And the students are
stopping, they're pausing, things we cannot do in a classroom.
"Oh, Professor, can you stop? Can you go back a sentence? I didn't catch that."
Yeah, rewinding, we know this. Watching it again, taking their
own notes. Every student is paying 100% attention to everything we teach
because you got to watch that video. You got to know, tradition dates Israelite
origins how far back? Is it Greece, Egypt? Mesopotamia, you know that, that's right.
One aspect of Mesopotamia culture that contrasts strongly with later Israelite
thought, what could that be? Its optimism, fatalism, militarism?
Its alcoholism?
Actually, we know the Mesopotamians were alcoholics. They invented alcoholic
beverages, barley beer, but that's not why. It was its fatalism that was very
different from what Israelite thought later created. You got to know things
like this that I bring out, and it's strictly timed. Either you know it
or you don't.
Whoops. Yes, I'm connected.
Now, then we started doing some research. We embedded surveys
in our Webcourses and asked for responses, and I've written this up.
I've conducted the research. I've written papers on this.
I presented at academic conferences.
"The video lectures in this course were effective in helping me understand
the course material." 96% strongly agree.
How about learning with video lecture, will that help me remember? 74% agree.
Strengthen my critical thinking skills? 63% agree. Learner engagement?
96% strongly agree. Educationally connected? 81% agree.
"I often pause the videos to take notes, reflect on content, etc.?" 96%
Usually watch the course videos more than once? More than once, you watch
the whole video? 52%. That's nice.
Next step: gamification. I'm not stopping, not resting on my laurels. There's more
that we can do in the online environment, things we cannot do in a traditional
classroom. I'm teaching a course now as we speak, online, on biblical archaeology,
and video-wise, editing-wise, it's the best we've ever produced. We have
just a brilliant student editor, as you've seen. But, so much more. What if we
turned this into a game, especially when it comes to the most difficult
part of teaching archaeology. You got to identify pottery. Is this Bronze
Age? Is it Iron Age I? Is it Iron II? I have a lecture on this online but
there's more. Let's turn this into a video game. So, I am now, as we speak, working
with UCF Downtown FIEA, and I have a whole team of graduate students in
video gaming that are, as we speak, completing my first video game.
So, I went down to look at their progress, and here's just a snippet of that.
Here's what they are doing for me. It's not finished yet, but you get
a sense. They're creating characters. I get to go in and do voiceovers.
That'll be fun.
(Speaker 1) Oh, I love this.
(laughter)
And really the graphics just rock it.
(Speaker 2) So, here is the thing.
(Speaker 1) Just awesome.
(Ken) This is an actual site in old Jerusalem. It's the Siloam Pool,
and here's our character. Our Indian Jones type archaeologist. We even have
a time portal. You can back through time.
(Speaker 2) Yeah, for now we have it. We also might change the time portal
a little bit because it's not blending with the environment.
(Ken) He's going to meet up with an eccentric 19th century
British archaeologist.
(Speaker 1) Here's my team all gathered. Woo! Yeah, you guys rock.
(laughter)
(Ken) That's my gang.
(Speaker 1) Awesome, kudos.
(Ken) Kudos.
So much more we can do.
Suggestions just to get started, and we do have an amazing video studio
right in this building and I understand most of the time, it's unused.
But even beyond that, you don't need anything fancy. Simple camera videos.
Create a personal narrative. Just sit in front of your laptop, hope it's a Mac,
and turn on the camera. Start recording. I ask myself if I were a student, what
would I want to experience in an online course? And yeah, the text and readings
are all great but I'd like to see my professor. Wouldn't that be awesome?
My professor talks to me. Maybe something about the students themselves
or a character or historical person. Add a voiceover to tell the story. I don't
know how PCs work but with Mac, we have iMovie and with a little bit of
coaching, you can become an expert on iMovie. You can have all kinds of
images. You can add a soundtrack even if you want to. You can tell a story.
Tell a story. We're naturally intrigued by stories. They draw us in. They take
us to a place and time where we never were. The students use concepts from
class and connect them to stories. The result could have a huge impact.
We're talking about serious learning outcomes here. And then, dream.
Taking classroom learning and putting a what-if spin on it is higher level
thinking. That's what I'm all about. What are the questions asked?
What are the issues raised? Whatever material we're studying, the questions
are more important than answers because, especially in higher level
learning, who knows what a right answer is? What if something in history happened
differently or if a character in a story made a different decision?
Video is a great medium to play those ideas out. So is gaming, by the way.
So, here's an example from our latest course, Biblical Archaeology.
(Music)
(Narrator) Jerusalem in the 21st century, the flashpoint of geopolitics today,
as it has been from time immemorial. Though united under Israeli rule since
1967, the facts on the ground are nonetheless evidence of two Jerusalems.
One Jewish, one Arab. It is in the sleepy Arab suburb of Siwan that the fragile
modus vivendi of the two hostile populations is being threatened
by, of all things, an archaeological dig. Incredibly, the ground beneath has given
up over years of excavation, the remains of what might well be the palace of none
other than King David, Israel's first great king whose praises are chanted
in the streets of the holy city, even to this day. It's also the focus of
another conflict. This one between competing scholarly camps in the
ever-changing field of Biblical archaeology.
(Ken) And I mentioned that eccentric 19th century British archaeologist.
They called him The Mole as he's underground in actual tut underneath
the city of Jerusalem. That's the focus of our game, but here he is in the
Webcourse itself.
(Narrator) At the end of October 1867, Sir Charles Warren, an officer in the
British Royal Engineers and one of the earliest European archaeologists of the
Holy Land, explored a hand-chiseled conduit leading from Jerusalem's ancient
water source: the Gihon Spring. Warren recorded the adventure in his journal.
"It was easy walking until we reached 600 feet into the tunnel. Then we began
crawling on all fours as we saw bits of cabbage stalks floating by. We realized
that the waters had started to rise. There I was with a pencil, compass,
and field book in my hands, and the candle, for the most part, in my mouth."
(Ken) And since we are Judaic studies, and since I lived over in the Middle East,
and since I speak Hebrew, wouldn't it be nice if my students got an experience
with the Hebrew language. I also teach Hebrew. Why not embed Hebrew into
our courses with English subtitles, things we could never do in class, and the
students get to hear the language being vocalized and even have a little teaser
underneath. "Would you like to learn Hebrew? Sign up for our..."
(laughter)
So, I really like this one.
(Narrator) The fact that subterranean archaeology is on the front line in
today's conflict is but a new wrinkle in the ongoing battle for David. For better
or for worse, the diggers will continue to dig and that's the way it is.
Israel's greatest modern poet, the late Yehuda Amichai, summed it up.
(speaking Hebrew)
(Music)
(Ken) So, summing up.
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."
Thank you very much, gang.
(clapping)
(Moderator) Wow.
(clapping)
We do have a couple of minutes for a few questions for Ken. Does anybody
have any questions?
(Ken) Yes, a couple of minutes for a few questions here.
(Moderator) No questions?
Okay, I have a question while you're thinking of one or two. How long did
it take you to get all of these videos produced? Did you do it in one semester?
(Ken) I create a semester's worth of video content in a semester. I do it a semester
in advance because I know this has to go to my student editor, who has to create
this magic, and he's as much responsible for this as I am. In fact, for every
minute that we see in video, it takes about 2 hours of editing work. That's
what it takes. So, we're very fortunate to have a UCF graduate student do that.
But yeah, what was the question?
(laughter)
(Moderator) How long did it take you to build this library of videos?
(Ken) Yeah, so I would basically script it. You got to script everything.
Yeah, it's perspiration but this is what I do, it's fun. I would sit on the weekend
and script a 20-25 minute video, right. Then I've got is as a Word file, and
Hebrew as well I incorporate, and then I email it right here to this building.
Come in one day during the week, go in front of the green screen and record it
in about an hour to an hour and a half max, including character changes.
And again, do them in advance. So, it's hard to specify how much time it takes.
It takes a lot of upfront time, but look at the payoff.
(Moderator) But you've done it over a series of many semesters, right?
(Ken) Yeah, over five of them now and still going strong.
(Moderator) Great, and we have a question over here.
(Audience Member) Good morning. This was great, thank you. But I have
a question. So, history, math, and things like that don't really change. I'm in
health professions so health is constantly changing. So, if I were to do something
like this, what do you suggest as far as keeping up to date with the statistics
and the changes in health and equality, health disparities. I'm not sure that
something like this would exactly work for me just because things change from
semester to semester, but what recommendations do you have for
people who are in fields that are ever-changing like health?
(Ken) Well, I agree and disagree because everything is changing, even in history.
In the last couple of months, we had a major new archaeological find, a little
seal from the prophet Isaiah, can you imagine, and that's not yet in our video.
So, the wonderful thing is hey, next time around, we add. You add like a
little addendum, and these could be any length of time because after all,
they get what 20-25 minutes per week compared to 2 hours in a classroom or
more, two and a half hours per week. So, there's plenty of opportunity to add,
to supplement. I think this can really work in any field with some creativity,
and I always think Bill Nye.
(laughter)
In any field, we can be as creative as our imaginations will allow.
(Moderator) Oh, okay. Hang on, here it comes.
(Audience Member) First of all, I wanted to congratulate you
on such an effective, wonderful way of delivering instruction. I'm totally
inspired, and I can prove it. I'm sitting here writing notes like a mad men.
(Ken) That's jolly good.
(Audience Member) This is great. I'm going to be having a class coming
up that's going to be in this manner on hard rock and heavy metal of the 1980s.
One of the things I'm most concerned about is the use of images.
(Ken) Yes.
(Audience Member) So, a lot of your images, are they public domain?
What was the process of getting copies of those images?
(Ken) I'm afraid to answer this.
(laughter)
(Audience Member) Or they just magically appeared, that's okay.
(Ken) Actually, what we've done to start up is taking any image we can find from
Google, and I've been down this route repeatedly, and I'm told that it's a gray
area. Even our UCF attorney has been working with us on it. We can call it
fair use, especially for what we're doing here, but we are trying to correct this
and I can tell you that we now are planning this summer to completely
re-edit our Holocaust course using entirely free images from Wikimedia
Commons. I can't do that with my other courses cause they're very specific to
places in Israel, for example, so I'm going to have to get on a plane and
take my beautiful iPhone 10 camera, and I'm going to have to go
physically and I'm going to do it. I'm going to make my own images,
but that is a good point.
(Audience Member) And you'll be replacing the images with ones from
free sources?
(Ken) Free source Wikimedia Commons is a great source.
They just don't have enough for what I do so I got to physically go.
(Audience Member) When you get ahold of these images,
I'm sorry for all the questions, then you'll go back to the video team.
They've already got the raw footage?
(Ken) Exactly.
(Audience Member) So, this image for image C or something like that.
(Ken) Yes, and I already have, by the way, a free YouTube channel. If you just type
in Kenneth Hanson on YouTube, it'll take you to Treasures in Time, which
is my YouTube channel, and I've put all these things out there for the public,
which is interested. Not students, the public, and as of now, I got nearly one
thousand subscribers to my YouTube channel. All five courses are there,
but we want to transition this to a subscription site with some advertising.
I'm working with ORC now actually to make that happen. That's our next step.
(Moderator) We have time for one last question over here.
(Audience Member) Yeah, thank you for the presentation. You sort of answered
what I was going to ask. Where are these videos? Where do you put them up?
Where do the students see them? Because everything I got in taking this course is
don't do long videos, don't do this, and one issue is like storage. You know, when
I did some videos for my class and they take a lot of time, the entire time.
Not the time, I mean the storage I have on Webcourses.
(Ken) No, that's a good question actually. These are located on Vimeo, and we can
put as much on Vimeo as we want, and that's what we incorporate via link into
Canvas. So, what I've done then is to take them separately and convert them into
MPEG video files, which I upload separately to YouTube. But as far
as UCF is concerned, they're all on Vimeo and yes, we should keep them
short is the advice that we get, but that's if you're doing something say
from your computer, just turn it on and you know, talk for five minutes.
Great, maybe do another one. But as long as they're to the point and pithy
enough, shouldn't be overly long. I am cut considerable slack because of the
technical quality, but also because I do these characters, I'm told here that it
chunks the material. Almost as if I've got multiple shorter ones rather than just
a talking head for 25 minutes. That's why I'm almost compelled, in fact, to do these
characters, to chunk it. Okay.
(Moderator) Great, thank you. I wish we had more time for Q&A, but we are watching
the clock. I want to thank you, Ken, for sharing all of your experiences with us.
(clapping)
We got to see the many faces on the screen, but the actual Ken Hanson was
with us. So, thank you.