Presentation Styles of Vocabulary Instructional Videos
I analyzed the first 30 vocabulary instruction videos I found through web search, and analyzed their design features from a pedagogical perspective. Based on Koumi's (2015) framework of video's pedagogical affordances, I have picked seven affordances that are relevant for vocabulary instruction videos. Those 7 affordances are:
- Rich symbol system (presentational attributes): using multiple types of symbol, especially both verbal and pictorial
- Provision of real/amplified experience: providing realistic or amplified examples by using rich multimedia contents such as motion pictures to provide rich context clues for students to infer vocabulary meaning and usage
- Personalization of the teacher: having a vivid instructor presence through talking head and narration
- Optimal pedagogic design: being structured and designed to provide cognitive support for selecting, attending to, interpreting, organizing, and integrating information
- Motivational influences: using affective and cognitive techniques to increase motivational commitment to active cognitive processing
- Variable size/duration: video length is appropriate and segmented into smaller videos when there is a lot of information to be presented
- Student reactivity: having prompts for students to reflect
As I sort of expected, most videos didn't have all 7 attributes integrated. Some had 6 integrated. Some had 5. Most had 3 or less of them integrated. See Table 1.1. What a disappointment!
Next, I looked at which pedagogical affordances were integrated in each video. The pedagogical affordances that were missing from many videos were: student reactivity and teacher personalization. Absence of student reactivity means there wasn't any sort of prompt for reflection (e.g., "What do you think it means?"). Only 2 videos had student reactivity incorporated. Teacher personalization means teacher's unique personalities that stand out. Only 8 of them had teacher characteristics that stood out. The worst video of the 30 only had an onscreen text with no narration or images. See Table 1.2 for detail.
Let's take a look at some of the good ones and bad ones from this survey. All three videos teach the word condescending. The video A is absolutely useless. No audio, no explanation, and no graphic illustration. It only shows the spelling and a synonym. Nobody wants to watch a video just to get this little information. The video B shows some good effort with the visual department, but it's still a just little bit more than a normal dictionary. Video's superior presentational attributes are not effectively utilized. The C is one of the good ones.
A.
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B.
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C.
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Whether you believe it or not, I found numerous videos like A. I wonder who made all those videos for what purposes. This survey only examined 30 videos that teach the word condescending. But I plan to explore more videos with other target words to get a more accurate view of the state of vocabulary instruction videos. By the way, this one (video D) I ran into teaches a different word, but it is my #1 favorite so far. The context clues given were not strong enough to be sure about the word's meaning, but the story depicted was memorable enough. The short test at the end was helpful to clarify my inference of the word's meaning. Additionally, now I know this word can be used in this context. I wonder if my students know this word, though.
D.
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References
- Raw data about the videos.
- Koumi, J. (2015). Learning Outcomes Afforded by Self-Assessed, Segmented Video-Print Combinations. Cogent Education, 2, 1-27.