HI everyone:
In today's instructor coffee chat, there was a conversation about "what a technical course looks like-- is it just a screencast?"
I thought, in response, it would be helpful to show what I do.
For context, I published my first course on Udemy in 2011. Please don't let this video intimidate you-- the most important thing is for you to come across as a human being who can communicate clearly and cares. The rest is aesthetics-- nice to have but not critical.
I like to think of a course video as a series of scene. I'll post a few images of scene I use in sequence and then provide a link to the entire video.
001: Tease: Get the Student Interested in the Video
002: Opening Google Sheets (Notice that the screen is enlarged to ensure someone watching on mobile can see what I'm doing)
003: Split Screen: Explaining what we are going to be doing-- Notice the tool I'm talking about is on the screen along with me as the instructor
004 Screencast: Back to the screencast, enlarged, I start demonstrating the skill that is the focus of the video.
005: Screencast with annotation-- Here, I demonstrate how a cell is addressed by column and row number.
006: Another variation of split-screen to explain column labels
007: Back to the enlarged screencast to complete the activity
008: Back to split screen to wrap up. Notice I use lower third graphics to identify the course section and myself.
The total running time for this video is four minutes, so we're shifting to a new "scene" just about every 30 seconds. This helps with engagement, makes the video less boring, and helps me, as the instructor, seem more human and forge a relationship with the viewer.
Here's the full video:
Since I know people are curious, here's the equipment and software used to create this:
Sony ZV-1f Camera
Boya Shotgun Microphone
Neewer NL660 LED Light Set with Softbox
Two Logitech Letra LED Streaming Lights
U-Phoria UM2 Analog to Digital Audio Interface
USB-C Video Capture Card
Mac Mini M1
Software: Camtasia
Please let me know if you have questions or ideas, or would like feedback on something you're doing.
Best,
Mark
