Video Making Tips for Laboratory Instructors

Abstract

Demonstration videos are an excellent way to introduce students to new laboratory techniques, but many available videos are of low quality, too long, lack human diversity, and the main narrator is someone other than the instructor of the course. Videos may feature terminology and equipment different from what the students will use and the availability of the video is also not controlled by the lab instructor. Lab instructors can enhance the lab experience of students by making their own demonstrations videos. The current cell phone camera technology allows instructors to make custom videos. We watched many successful how-to style YouTube videos and distilled several techniques. We then applied these techniques to make more engaging videos for our students. Many of our videos have found success on YouTube. In this paper, we break down our video making techniques for demonstrating laboratory equipment and protocols. We hope the readers will find inspiration to make their own demonstration videos to aide their students.