Distance Learning and YouTube

In my ongoing series on distance learning – for those of you who are interested in distance teaching – I would like to mention another technique one of my instructors this semester is trying for the first time.  After we have our weekly online chat session and post our thoughts on the week's readings on the Blackboard discussion forum, she collates together the views and writes a mini-lecture (around 16-18 minutes) synthesizing our thoughts, adding her own, and making connections to the material she plans to cover in the following session.  She films these lectures informally at her house and posts them on YouTube for us to watch.  While the videos do not have the benefit of interactivity, they do simulate certain aspects of the discussion by drawing in all the students' thoughts and our instructor's reactions to our contributions in a more "personal" way.  The videos are very informal, just filmed on the instructor's laptop as if she is having a conversation with us in a tutorial setting.  The students have responded very well to this as it is an impactful and easily-digested way of synthesizing information we have been discussing in more detail via Blackboard.  While I wouldn't recommend teaching a whole course via YouTube, these informal tutorial/mini lectures are proving very effective and enjoyable.