Great Expectations: Students and Video in Higher Education

There is little doubt that students are accustomed to multiple methods for consuming information, ranging from journal articles, books, and textbooks to lectures, newspapers, blog posts, and videos. They participate in courses that take place live in a classroom on a college campus; they join hybrid classrooms; and they learn via courses that occur asynchronously, with instructors whom they will never meet in person. Their classroom experiences are varied. Students bring their own life experiences with them into the classroom, and they are an opinionated group, regardless of their age or geographic location. Combining previous research on video in higher education, surveys of 1,673 students, and a collection of in-depth interviews, this white paper examines student expectations for use of video within the classroom, how and why students use educational video outside the classroom, how likely students are to watch videos produced by libraries, and what tips students have for libraries about how to reach them.