Now that we’ve gathered important information for students, we can create a support structure that tries to solve a student’s problem: the need to go to a third-party source or elsewhere to support their learning. This step will require the most time in its general form, with specifications relative to each course, which may fluctuate. For this, instructors could:
- Create help papers (using a math class as an example): These could take the form of class handouts on Canvas and are meant to break down the problem in a way that helps students understand how to look at the problem and reason it out. One of the biggest helps for me on tests when I forgot an equation was remembering the reason behind this problem and what the equation is supposed to help you find, which allowed me to reason out the equation. This would help to future-proof the contents of the topic so that students understand how something works not just that it does.
A help paper would involve the key information highlighted in the problem and an accompanying reason explaining its importance. Try making it short, think no more than one to two sentences long. This will be for every step of a problem. This will allow students to act precisely when seeking help by determining which step in the process they got confused on to seek instructor aid, without needing to go to third-party sources.
- Create lecture videos – The creation of lecture videos will probably be one of this idea’s most time-consuming aspects. When making these videos, try going slowly and make sure you’re not overwhelming students. It is often our first time hearing about these concepts and while they may be natural to you, they are often foreign to us. When creating these videos, the videos of The Organic Chemistry Tutor provide a great example of what to focus on:
The amount of clutter should be kept to an absolute minimum. Keeping the only information on the screen to the problem allows students to focus on the topic at hand.
Do not have the recording take place in a class setting – What works with the YouTube videos is the fact that his videos have just a black screen. There are no distractions from the light or the disconnect from the board and wall, or the lifespan of the markers, or students coughing, etc. It does a lot to help students focus.
Do not have paragraphs on the screen – it should be spoken when explaining a concept or how to solve a problem. If students need text, it would be best to create captions. Having text of any size that isn’t the question actively works against the student because it disconnects them from the problem and makes it harder for students to rewind and get what they missed.
Do not have a cacophony of colors – if there are more than three colors on the screen at a given time, it’ll look like a Skittles commercial. This will lead to the visuals being somewhat overwhelming for students.
Do work on practice problems throughout the video. The ability to work on an issue right after it is explained has helped me remember key aspects of a section. This also helped draw me into teaching by allowing me to work with the concepts I’ve learned, making it more rewarding to engage with the video.
Continuing with math class as an example. When creating the videos and help papers, instructors can use the information gathered in the first step, with the specific class constraints, to determine what to focus on in the videos and how to implement the videos and papers. I think a good way of doing this is by releasing videos and documents according to the needs of the students, where the most challenging concepts are prioritized. The resources of each course will determine the frequency and quantity of releases.
This, as well as the ideas raised in the first blog post, would benefit greatly from the assistance of AI. The ability for AI to expedite the process of many of these ideas, with the instructions there to do a quality check, would allow for this idea to be implemented as quickly as possible. With AI’s assistance, I believe both steps can be completed in a more timely fashion.
Written by Rick, an undergraduate student at UWM.
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Relevant CETL Teaching and Learning Resources and Research
The ideas shared in this blog post align with the concept of the think alouds teaching technique (watch this two minute video for an example of a think aloud or this three minute video for a think aloud regarding reading) as well as research on the effectiveness of video learning for students (see Navarrette et al., 2025). In addition to the video approach, UWM faculty are experimenting with the use of podcasts and even AI created podcasts to aid in student learning.
The use of videos beyond vides of the lecture may include short videos (3-5 minutes) that the key takeaways or learning outcomes of the prior week, a short video connect prior weeks to what student swill learn this week, or even videos explaning complex assignments or project work that discuss common pitfalls and give instrcutors and faculty a chance to highlight exemplars from past students.