Have you ever gotten the giggles during a class? I did once, during a seminar, when our professor showed us a video that was at least 20 years out of date. The student next to me started giggling too, and then the two of us just couldn’t stop. It was very rude of us, I know. But the video was just so bad. The music! The script! The outfits!
My assignment, as instructional design intern, is to help the library faculty develop and refine online tools, including videos, that will engage City Tech students. While working on this, I’ve spent some time watching videos produced by college and university libraries. There are great ones out there that we can learn from. But there are also many that demonstrate what to avoid, such as distracting music or awkward scripts.
Videos fall into many “what to avoid” categories, for example, those about Rapping librarians or Star Trek librarians:
Rapping Librarians
Star Trek Librarians
For the sake of comparison, here is one video that I find funny and effective. It also has over 3 million views on Youtube: good job BYU Library!
