Flipgrid videos for student interaction
Neil Cowie
What is the idea?
Flipgrid is a video sharing Microsoft application. A teacher can easily set up a class project asking students to make their own videos on a digital device with a camera. The videos can be up to ten minutes in length and students can edit their videos to include multimedia and text. After they upload their videos to Flipgrid all classmates and the teacher can view them. Students and the teacher can then make short feedback videos or write text messages commenting on everybody’s work. In this way, a real sense of community and interactivity can be fostered. In my setting as an English language teacher in a Japanese university, Flipgrid is an ideal application for students to practice speaking and listening outside of class. Many students find English communication very challenging and Flipgrid gives them the opportunity to practice in a less stressful environment.
Why this idea?
Video sharing offers a number of benefits to a teacher such as giving instructions and feedback, and students can demonstrate their skills and knowledge (Cowie & Sakui, 2021). Videos can be slowed down, rewound and have subtitles – all of which can enhance learning by making their content easier to process and understand (Mayer, 2017) and decrease ‘cognitive load’ (Sweller et al., 2011). Videos are also available on demand so they can be viewed by students in their own time which is very helpful for managing time, especially for non-traditional students. One important benefit for remote students is that videos can be used to develop a feeling of class belonging, which has been shown to be an extremely important element of online learning (Redmond et al., 2018). There is a strong connection to the well-known ‘Community of Inquiry’ framework for e-learning (Garrison, 2011; Garrison, et al., 1999) which is based on three overlapping aspects of ‘presence’ (social, cognitive and teaching). Flipgrid is particularly suitable for collaborative sharing and so when students interact with each other and their teacher through video these three aspects of presence can be developed.
How could others implement this idea?
Many institutions maintain Microsoft educator accounts that include applications such as Teams or Office 365. If this is the case then Flipgrid will also be bundled into this account and will be accessible to teachers and students. If not, an individual teacher can create a free Flipgrid account using a web browser or mobile application and supply a link to the students to the teacher’s Flipgrid home page.
Once a teacher has a Flipgrid account they can then create a class (called a group) and for each group they can create a lesson (called a topic). The topic has a title and space for instructions on what students should do when they make their videos. After this the teacher specifies the length of the video from a drop-down menu and can also add various visual effects such as GIFs or photos that reflec