Forms of Teaching and Support
Copyright © 2019 Cecily Tyler
All rights reserved
Video essay assignments can vary greatly and therefore the scope of expected learning outcomes can simultaneously vary. Some of the elements to consider are depth of research, the analytical framework(s), the sophistication and accessibility of the videotaping and editing tools to be used, the topic(s) to cover, interview and filming protocols, video length, and whether the work is meant to be done by an individual student or a team of students.
Below we have shared what we needed to carry out video essay assignments including initial teaching-collaboration, the necessary equipment, examples of video essay assignments, a list of one-off workshops to support or enhance the learning, and analytical frameworks used to develop video essay assignments and their supplemental materials. We have outlined two video essay assignments for context. They are as follows:
1. Assignment One: list below are the elements offered during a year-long Harvard Kennedy School Reading and Research project (i.e. an individual independent study for pre-selected students) with deliverables being a 15 minute video and supplemental deck showing their field-based, designed oriented research.
2. Assignment Two: Here is a tutorial and assignment, with more information outlined below, offered during a semester-long Public Policy Masters field-base, experiential-learning course: the requirement being a 3-5-minute video, created by a team of 3 students, and counted towards their final grade.
3. Examples of Analytical Frameworks that were implemented to create a video essay can be found HERE.
Forms of Teaching and Support
To start, the faculty member, the video advisor and media experts can collaborate as educators: To save time, the faculty member will want to partner with a video advisor who can help build media literacy and training that maintains the academic rigor expected by the University. A university may want to bring in a video advisor long-term as a staff member or as a shorter-term consultant who builds media-training and infrastructure throughout the university. For our work, we used a model where the video advisor was a shorter-term academic fellow who left the legacy of their work in the hands of media experts found at the library and who were accessible to all faculty, campus wide.
When offering a video essay for the first time, we discovered that by having a video advisor, the faculty member can stay focused on their expertise of study, teaching pedagogues, and desired learning outcomes, while the video advisor addresses the needing learning on how to actually create a video and how to tell a compelling story while maintaining the integrity of the research.
Who is the video advisor? Start with a film consultant/educator, then train the video experts on staff: In our experience, partnering with and training media experts at the university library for the video advisor role can create the strongest option for sustainability. The faculty member will always design the course. Then, depending on the level of expertise of a video advisor, they can support the faculty member when considering specific aspects of the video essay pedagogy, the learning outcomes, scheduling additional training, how much time to allot for video essay training and coordination.
For universities that have yet integrated video essay creation, the video advisor will also work with other staffed-media experts (perhaps found at the library or elsewhere) to consider the future needed expertise, the operational needs for the students to have access to the library, needed film equipment, needed software, the workflow, additional workshops, and speciality office hours. The video advisor can eventually simply oversee ongoing advanced media-capacity building with the staffed-media experts.
A few notes about the first year in offering a video essay assignment:
The roles of each educator: Expect the faculty member to provide a creative assignment, and research and critical-thinking learning outcomes for the assignment. The video advisor will oversee storytelling training and again, depending on their teaching capacity, possibly aspects of the assignment as well. The media experts can initially provide vocational training and the depreciating assets (i.e., film gear and editing software with computer stalls). Expect that the team-- the faculty member and media expert-- will eventually address storytelling training as they evolve in these video essay assignment offerings.
Your budget will account for much of where you decide to start. While the barriers to filmmaking have dramatically decreased over the years, when asking students to create a video essay the expenses are as follows:
The camera or smartphone to film
Two exterior harddrives--one to download the project and one to back up the project (if you choose to use cloud storage, make sure that it can support edited files without altering the project).
A tripod
The tripod smartphone or camera mount (sometimes called the Joby Grip)
A sound recorder (something like a H4N Zoom)
A computer for desk research, downloading the footage onto the exterior harddrives, for creating a script and other documents. The computer needs to have editing capacity with software like iMovie, MovieMaker or Premier are commonly used
If the equipment is not properly used and stored, the negligence can create rather costly mistakes. There is nothing more disappointing than discovering a corrupted external harddrive or lost editing project file.
Assignment One: Types of Coaching offered for a year-long assignment:
The students/video creators who participate in an intensive independent study or year long course-- for example, the assignment would require a 15-minute film and supplements research deck as seen on this website -- had access to the following support systems that helped them implement their work.
1:1 support sessions with faculty/video adviser: These sessions enable the individual student (or in some cases a student team) to consider the scope, parameters and depth of their desk and field research and how it correlates to the magnitude of video training necessary to obtain and portray the research.
2 x 1-hour-long sessions per semester
4 x 1-hour-long sessions in total
1:1 weekly meetings with video adviser: These sessions help to address the immediate learning curves in field-research and filmmaking and to offer each student a thought partner.
1 x weekly during the fall semester (15 minutes each)
1 x every 2 weeks during the spring semester (30 minutes each)
Group sessions: “Developing Your Proposal and Research Framework”: These group sessions support the students with overall thought partnership and can be tailor designed to address any similar learning curves of all students. Another option is to use these sessions for interactive learning or for each student to present on some of the learning curves they have navigated during the course of the year.
5 x 1-hour-long sessions over the course of the academic year held with all students together, the faculty member and the video adviser
5 x 1-hour-long sessions over the course of the year held with Video Essay RAR Course participants and video adviser to serve and build thought-partnership and team-building among participants
Written materials: These can all be found on this website and are available as PDFs:
The Video Essay as a Tool for Teaching and Learning
Created by Jorrit de Jong and Cecily Tyler
Created by Cecily Tyler
Tutorial for a 3-minute Video Essay
Created by Jorrit de Jong and Cecily Tyler
Project Structure: Development of field-based and design-oriented course work
Created by Jorrit de Jong and Cecily Tyler
Created by Cecily Tyler
Examples of Video Essays and Supplemental Materials (please see “Examples” page)
Created by Students
Available upon request:
Examples of work from the students. Include: a treatment, storyboard, script, shot list, diagram of stakeholders, interview protocols, progress reports, or personal reflections. Please contact Cecily Tyler at cecilyt@docutribe.org.
In addition to the above outlined support coordinated by the faculty member and video advisor, the below support was coordinated by the video advisor and the extended community within the Harvard Library system. This team included experts in video, editing software, other media software, data visualization, the legal background of copyright and fair use, and deep archival research.
Examples from Interactive Video Essay Workshop Sessions
These can be offered based on when a teacher deems it an appropriate time. It will depend upon how much time the faculty member wants the students to focus on each element as they are laid out in the Project Structure: The Development of field-based and design-oriented course work.
We have offered approximate suggested dates below in order to help give context to provide a model for how one might want to structure these workshops in the context of a traditional academic year.
SESSION 1: Introduction and Preparation
Monday October 22nd at 5:15-6:30
SESSION 2: The Narrative: What comes after your initial research, preparing for production
Monday October 29th: 5:15 PM – 6:45
SESSION 3: The conceptual Narrative → Filming, Teaser, Storyboarding, Scripting, Interviewing
This is best conducted as an interactive course and during sunlight hours, in a safe environment indoors and outdoors. If you choose to film outside of the classroom which is preferable be sure proper permits and permissions are obtained for your students from all location owners.
Monday November 19th 2:00-end time is approximately 5:30 PM
SESSION 4: Editing →The final Narrative
Depending on whether you are teaching iMovie,Movie Maker Pro or a more sophisticated software, this workshop can run 1.5 to 3 hours long.
Saturday, November 23rd
Available upon request:
The above PowerPoint presentations, others PowerPoint presentations and film-watching assignments created by Cecily Tyler
Examples of ongoing basic training workshops offered during the academic year 2018-2019
These workshops can be offered by a video production advisor unless the main faculty member has the time to attend. The learning that takes place here has been clearly differentiated from that of the learning that the faculty member oversees. In this manner, the faculty members do not need to have the added pressure of learning perfectly how to create a video essay in the first year or so of creating video essay assignments.
TOUR of the Film Equipment at the Lamont Media Lab Library: This is to help a cohort of students to become acquainted with resources available to them.
Oct 17th at 10:15-11:00 AM
WORKSHOP: Filming 101 and Editing with iMovie: This can be a 1 to 3 hour interactive session that helps students learn the process of editing. From experience, to best support synthesizing and learning, it’s best to either ask students to film footage as part of this lesson or to provide them with pre-existing footage. If the workshop needs to be short, it’s best to provide footage. We also suggest this course happen before filming. It will help a student to better consider what to film and how the footage will support a good story via editing. The video advisor will need a classroom with computer stations that have access to iMovie.
Oct 18th at 10:30-11:45 AM
WORKSHOP: An Introduction to Editing with Adobe Premier: To note this course is only suggested for a longer in depth video essay assignment. Premier is a more sophisticated editing tool than iMovie or MovieMaker. This would require at least one 3 hour session and then follow up bi-weekly “meetups.” The video advisor will need a classroom with computer stations that have access to iMovie.
November 1st from 10:30-12:00 PM
The below workshops are specifically designed with individuals who are experts in archival research, data visualization software like Tableau, Fair Use, and Copyright. For more information or examples of this work, please contact Cecily Tyler at cecilyt@docutribe.org.
WORKSHOP: Capturing Data Visualization (Tableau) + Locating Archives and Collections for your Film Project
November 5th from 5:00-6:00
Introduction of Data Visualization via Tableau
Researching archival footage, deep archives of Harvard and documents
Free Media Repositories (Creative Commons, Wikimedia Commons, etc.)
Video Capture: Zoom, SnagIt, or Screenflow
Lamont training: An Introduction and continued learning session for Data Visualization with Tableau*
Nov. 14 at 1:30 pm
Nov. 15 at 1:30 pm
Lamont training: Ongoing Adobe Premier training and general Q&A
Tuesday, November 13th 1:30-3:00 PM
WORKSHOP: COPYRIGHT + FAIR USE AT HARVARD AND IN ACADEMIA, AND LAWS 101
Monday November 26th 5:15-7:15 PM, with an optional Q&A until 8 PM
WORKSHOP: In depth editing with Adobe Premier (and film equipment review, if requested) December 1st 10:00-2:00 PM
1:1 Harvard University media advisor and other general support for Researching archives in the library, Adobe Premier, Adobe AfterEffects, Tableau, other Data Visualization, Media Repositories, Video Capture, Copyright and Fair Use as needed
Weekly film and editing meetup drop-in sessions, open to the Harvard University community every other week
*Please bring an external hard drive and film equipment
Assignment One: The pilot option for integrating a video essay assignment
A 3-minute video essay may be a great way to learn how to best pilot integrating video into your assignments.
Below is an excerpt from a historical note: a sample schedule for an assignment in which student teams were asked to create a 3-minute video essay that had specific pre-assigned subject matter and community field-research parameters. The goal was to keep the assignment to a 12 hour commitment for the students. However, almost all students spent approximately 20 hours fulfilling the assignment. This assignment can be found in the Innovation Field Lab Tutorial.
The pre-defined below parameters reduced the time needed by the student to develop the video:
Academic and field research
A more targeted point of focus for the video essay narrative
Trust with the community
Assignment details from The Harvard Kennedy School INNOVATION FIELD LAB, Spring 2016 and the Innovation Field Lab Tutorial.
NOTE: Team members taking on this assignment should expect to spend a minimum of 12 hours of time on this deliverable. The following dates are an example for a team that would create a video over the course of one semester.
January 24th in class: Q&A and video essay presentation in class (30 minutes)
February 2nd: Optional interactive workshop training (4:00 – 5:30 PM @ Lamont Library, 1.5 hours)
TBA – office hours video advisor or Media expert at Lamont or Cabot Library (approximately 1-hour total)
February 2nd - February 9th: Review video essay assignment from professor. Decide who are the designated team members for each element of the video essay – development, production, post-production—and on what the storyline will more specifically focus.
February 2nd – February 14th: Video essay preparation—student teams organize independently and begin to consider storyline research (1-2 hours)
Before February 9th: Independently review video examples, start to organize film shoot (30 minutes)
Before February 9th: designated team members attempt a pre-video essay interview (10 minutes)
February 9th: Mandatory workshop training for film, iMovie and Storytelling (4:00 – 7:00 PM @ Lamont Library, 3 hours, with an optional Q&A after)
February 10th – February 26th: Field shoot (one day) – to be organized by student teams (3-4 hours)
For a printable PDF of “Forms of Teaching and Support,” please download it here.