How California State University Channel Islands Uses Interactive Course Tours

All images courtesy of CSU Channel Islands

 The challenge

For campuses like California State University (CSU) Channel Islands that offer diverse fields of study for both undergraduate and graduate students, capturing student interest for required one-credit courses isn't easy. Lecturer for the MBA program and Director of Career Success Initiatives, Jessica Muth, paired interactive video with Canvas to engage her asynchronous extended university population through an eight-week, eight-module career readiness course.

The solution

PlayPosit by WeVideo gave CSU Channel Islands an interactive video platform to help build proactive and engaging learning environments, designed to reduce the number of "it's in the syllabus" moments. Jessica used PlayPosit to:

• Personalize instruction: Jessica targets curricula to support diverse learning backgrounds, including: an undergraduate student with a former career in professional baseball, a student who was a vice president for a bank, and a student who worked as a cashier with an interest in accounting.
• Add engaging interactions: Jessica embeds resources to properly introduce course expectations, nurture flexibility and accessibility, and track progress.
• Prove effective curricula: In an asynchronous environment with limited weeks, no live classes, and a broad scope of lived experiences, Jessica uses data to evaluate and ensure impact.

PlayPosit's commitment to accessibility helped Jessica identify the importance of subtitles, which can (and should) be applied to every video.

Key takeaways

Implementing interactive video has shown Jessica that:

• Assignments that are worth points increase learner motivation more than assignments that aren't.
• Interactions improve student engagement and are best supported by polished video recordings.
• Data-backed engagement tools fuel student understanding, retention, and overall excitement towards career goals.

Using PlayPosit by WeVideo to create interactive course tours has shown:

• Enhanced learning: Using accessible and flexible learning tools are critical for inclusivity.
• Effective assessment: Validates PlayPosit as a powerful student engagement tool.
• Higher education potential: Promises for academic integration.

For synchronous, asynchronous, and blended learning environments alike, PlayPosit helps educators enhance student curricula with interactive video learning experiences that produce measurable results.

Hear the full story

Watch Lecturer Jessica Muth share her approach to using PlayPosit by WeVideo in CSU Channel Islands' MBA program, recorded during the PlayPosit Exchange summer event. Access the full session below.

Benefits of interactive video

• Triple engagement: Interactive video helps educators manage and measure learner gaps, trends, completion attempts, and overall progress.
• Create on-demand learning: Prove understanding with customizable interactions like reflective pauses, web embeds, surveys, and interactive video questions.
• Flexible course creation: Easily tailor content to diverse classes, audiences, and learning styles, then remediate to save time and scale each year.

Practical strategies for educators

• Design strategic video questions: Generate questions that ensure participation. Jessica asks students which of the eight modules includes the mock interview to familiarize students with course content, fuel interest, and best prepare them for the assignments ahead.
• Diversify engagement tools: Upload new or existing content, then use interactions to garner engagement. Jessica records Zoom videos, then adds reflective pauses and multiple-choice questions throughout to guide attention and retention.
• Utilize data to drive engagement: For Jessica, data is an instructional practice, used to track when students begin assignments, how long they take to complete them, when they pause, and more. Plus, learner-made content gets auto-graded, ultimately saving educators time.