Efficiency techniques for recording screencast lectures

Question

I use notetaking software on my tablet to write lecture notes, and then I record myself reading and explaining my lecture notes. I use those recordings as teaching.

However, I find it very time consuming to produce good videos that way. I do not enter the same 'engaging' mode as when standing between an audience and a huge black board. I frequently get muddled, forget what I want to say, and falter.

I usually edit those videos but I believe it must be possible to deliver videos with a presentable performance right from the get go.

Answer 1

Recorded lectures only seem harder because you are listening to yourself afterwards. I think if you never listened to them or thought about listening to them you would not notice the difference. Listening to yourself or watching yourself perform is always painful because it's never as good as the imagination.

I recommend limiting your lectures to three minutes. That might seem extreme, but it's what I was taught by several experts and in my experience it works. Several reasons:

• Shorter recordings are less likely to have serious mistakes, so less gets discarded
• A normal student's attention span is 3-5 minutes. If you lecture longer than that, they can't pay attention. Target your lectures to less than the attention span, because they tend to turn out longer than planned.
• Faculty attention spans are not much longer than students'.

Separate your lectures with activities.

Also, during a crisis isn't the time to do a perfect job.