Guest blogger, Janine Utell, a Professor of English at Widener University in Pennyslvania, shares her latest pedagogical experiment on the ProfHacker blog: teaching with video essays.

This is not exactly a post about how to teach the video essay (or the audiovisual essay, or the essay video, or the scholarly video).  At the end I share some resources for those interested in teaching the form: the different ways we might define the form, some of the theoretical/conceptual ideas undergirding the form, how it allows us to make different kinds of arguments, and some elements of design, assignment and otherwise.

What I’m interested in here is reflecting on what this particular teaching moment has taught me.  It’s a moment still in progress/process.  These reflections might pertain to any teaching moment where you’re trying something new, where you’re learning as the students are learning, where everyone in the room is slightly uncomfortable (in a good, stretching kind of way), where failure is possible but totally okay, and where you’re able to bring in a new interest of your own and share it with the students.

Read more about what she tried out and what she learned in her post, “Teaching While Learning: What I Learned When I Asked My Students to Make Video Essays” (Chronicle of Higher Education, May 18, 2016).

IMAGE CREDIT: CC-licensed Flickr photo by Jakob Montrasio.