Quim Sabrià
CEO, Edpuzzle
Daren White
Academic Technologies Specialist and Edtech
Demonstrator Delivery Lead, Academies Enterprise Trust
Video learning platforms that came to the fore during COVID-19 lockdown periods are shaping the educational teaching landscape as schools enter the post-pandemic era.
Many schools switched to online learning during the pandemic lockdowns out of necessity. But as education returns to traditional teaching, virtual and video learning elements of education are being retained in a “hybrid”, or blended learning, format as platforms evolve to better meet the needs of teachers and pupils.
Individual learning
Former maths teacher Quim Sabrià believes video learning is an integral part of modern education but emphasises it must retain the key element of individual learning, rather than the one-size-fits-all aspects of other platforms some schools used to continue learning during lockdown.
He launched Edpuzzle – an interactive platform where teachers can transform any video into a lesson – with three co-founders in 2013.
Post-pandemic education
During lockdown, the edtech platform rose in popularity because of its ease of use and the way it allowed teachers to embed questions during videos, monitor the way students accessed and used the video at their own pace and analysed student performance and response.
In the post-pandemic educational landscape, he feels it is natural for schools to continue using such technology, but in a hybrid learning approach that embraces face-to-face and virtual teaching.
Acknowledging that videos were part of the teaching process prior to the pandemic, he believes experiences of using it can now be taken to a new level as a “symbiosis between technology and the traditional classroom.” Edpuzzle, adds Quim, is not a substitute to a teacher, but should complement the learning process.
Strengths and needs
Daren White, who has been a teacher for 23 years, is also Academic Technologies Specialist and Edtech Demonstrator Delivery Lead for the Academies Enterprise Trust, which has 57 primary, secondary and special schools across the UK.
While teaching pupils at home during lockdown, he says it became apparent there were issues around sound quality and with pupils watching content “at the same speed, at the same time”, at the expense of being inclusive and “working to the strengths or needs of individual students.”
Platforms such as Edpuzzle, he adds, overcome this by tracking student performance, offering feedback and allowing individual interaction between teacher and student.
Within the classroom, the video learning platform allows for “rotation stations”, where some students watch the video while others discuss what they have learned.
He says teachers find the approach straightforward and it is popular with pupils, making them “more competent with finding information out for themselves.”