Students today are using media—old and new—in ways and speed never seen before. They do read the newspapers… the digital newspapers, we mean. They browsed through news feeds of Facebook and Instagram. They communicate via email, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, and all the other platforms you can think of. This is the reason why video production is also being used as an instructional tool. But the risks are there such as the shifting of the focus of the lesson on the use of the media rather than on the content of the video.
To combat and allay these fears, lecturers must decontextualize the video itself and use the content to link it with ongoing curricular activities of a particular learning context. When this happens, the videos then becomes an instructional strategy to aid students to learn faster and better; to make them understand concepts easier and to provide an avenue for them to apply the learned skills.
Lecturers must always look for new ways to capture the attention of their audience—the students. They could not use the old blackboard or the projector because students are learning faster and better now through the internet.
If they could not understand a concept being taught in the classroom, they could easily research about it on the internet, read about it on forums, or learn from unofficial sources. Although we are always open to new ways of sourcing knowledge, the internet is a vast place where misinformation is a risk.
An instructional strategy like the use of a video production will engage the learner and facilitate learning better. It represents a plan, a method, and a series of activities that are aimed at one goal—to make learning more fun.
You can use video production in a variety of ways such as watching a documentary about the World War II or marketing videos that promote books, companies, and products. In this application of this instructional strategy, the videos merely work as a tool and not the focus of the lesson.
The media are not being studied formally. Rather, the content is going to be analyzed in the context of the lesson being taught. If the students are studying world history, the content of the video, which was about the historical background of World War II, will be analyzed for veracity and for representation.
All of these are possible, of course, in the hands of a well-equipped instructor who can moderate the analysis of media content and who himself understands the importance of separating the media in its true form and its messages.