Improving K-12 learning outcomes is a major area of research in the education space. The research is centered on finding ways to make new skills, concepts, and information more graspable for students.

Videos have the potential to become the perfect companion for teachers. With the help of video clips, educators can impart a deeper understanding of concepts. 

You should, however, have a clear understanding of the news clip, documentary, or any other video clip and evaluate its impact on young minds before using it.

Apart from that, educators should also be wary of when and how to use video content to improve K-12 learning outcomes. 

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Following are the three main reasons for using video content to improve student learning outcomes: 

• Building background knowledge
• Enriching a text
• Solidifying students’ learning

Teachers utilize various modalities, such as verbal explanations, drawing, and reading. Adding visual media to the list helps them build sound background knowledge in the students’ minds regarding any topic. 

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“Rather than trying to simplify information, amplifying the curriculum means finding as many ways as possible to make key information comprehensible.” – Pauline Gibbons, Education Researcher

Next comes enriching the text. Take an example of students reading a nonfiction or fiction story in textual form. How about contextualizing the story using video clips?

The third and final purpose of video content is to solidify K-12 learning outcomes. 

For instance, you can leverage instructional, child-friendly how-to videos to reinforce student learning. 

There are plenty of free resources such as BrainPop, TeacherTube, and YouTube, accessible via the internet, to do just that! 

That said, if you want interactive and engaging videos to enhance student learning outcomes, you can check out HurixDigital’s K-12 Digital Content Library. It has over 2500 videos covering Mathematics and Science, designed especially for K-12 students and mapped to the global curriculum.

Also Read: 8 Reasons to Include Interactive Video Learning in Higher Ed Courses

It’s easy. Be selective!

While it’s true that videos can work wonders for student engagement, picking a rather uninteresting video will not do the trick.

Choose the most dynamic parts of the documentary, news segments, or films that you want your students to watch. 

Review your purpose as stated in the previous section. 

For instance, if you want to teach youngsters about the dark history of the Holocaust, you could decide to watch Schindler’s List with them. 

Now since the movie has violent scenes, you have to be strategic about it but not dismissive. You can decide to show select clips to the kids according to what’s appropriate for their age bracket. 

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For students to retain the information for extended periods, video learning should be combined with the writing of notes.

This method is especially applicable if the video is packed with lots of information. Do not hesitate to pause the video in between, ask a few questions, and encourage them to take notes. 

To keep the students attentive and accountable, set a goal or mission beforehand.

It is possible that students may miss an important point while watching the video. Turning the captions on will allow them to read and note it down. 

Besides, you can also provide them with transcripts for them to go through everything and see if they’ve missed anything. The digital copies can also serve as notes for reference in the future.

A survey conducted in 2014 by Huffpost indicates that videos are indeed impactful in the overall experience, education, and information retention. With the emergence of online learning, videos will continue to gain traction in the upcoming years.

According to an estimate provided by the same survey, about 49% of the respondents reported watching 6-20 educational videos every month. 

K-12 content developers are thus focused on creating a video-centric, inviting, engaging, and exciting environment just like Hulu and Netflix. 

Did you know that our brain processes visuals about 60,000 times faster compared to text? 

That’s all the more reason why you should integrate educational videos into your curriculum.

What better way of introducing your students to famous people, political figures, and great historians than showing videos? 

What if your students could hear how an extinct species or remote wilderness would sound like?

How about investigating energy transfer and the laws of motion? 

Or visualizing how the universe functions? 

It’s feasible with videos that would greatly enhance the students’ K-12 learning outcomes.

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This is an overlooked benefit of using videos for improving K-12 student learning outcomes. 

Hearing-impaired students rely on visual cues to study their curriculum. In that sense, videos with captions can offer them a better learning experience by keeping them engaged and energized. 

Besides, incorporating technology such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) into your videos will make the classrooms more fun and interactive. 

We cannot really wrap-up our discussion on the role of videos in enhancing the K-12 learning outcomes without talking about AR/VR.

One of the biggest problems that persist today is the lack of practical understanding among students – through no fault of their own.

Sure, they have a lot of theoretical knowledge. Unfortunately, the education system is largely based on regurgitation instead of experiential learning.

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The learning process for students can be reinforced using technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality. 

It is because AR/VR encourages individual empowerment, collaboration, asking of questions, and solving real-world problems by taking a more practical approach.

This is what should be the foundation of authentic assessment. 

When you groom kids with experiential learning, they apply the same approach when they are out in the real world, solving real problems. 

Also Read: Best K-12 Curriculum Development Companies for Online Learning

Videos are instrumental in refining students’ creativity, cooperation, and K-12 learning outcomes. They improve retention rates manifold and help students get clarity of concepts. 

Technology may or may not be your forte, but you can always introduce it to your classrooms using engaging visual content solutions.

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