Using Video as a Teaching Tool With Special Needs Students
Once considered a supplemental teaching tool, educational video is becoming an increasingly central resource for instruction. Video presents visual and audio information simultaneously, making it easier to reach students who learn best through different modalities and learning styles. A growing body of research supports the pedagogical significance of this important tool for the regular education classroom (Cruse, 2007). Video can also help to reach and motivate students for whom school and learning pose special challenges.
Rick Hillman, Technology Manager for Mercer County Special Services School District, agrees that video and visual learning are important tools for teaching their population of special needs students, including those with autism, multiple disabilities and behavior disabilities. According to Hillman, the district has had success using video-based lessons to hold the focus of students who have behavior disabilities: "The interactivity of the video engages students who are otherwise difficult to engage, especially in group settings." Teachers in this district also use multiple visual tools, including video, in modeling activities with students, especially in vocational and pre-vocational settings.
This paper explores two especially promising avenues for working with special needs students: closed-captioning and instructor-created video.
Teaching With Closed-Captioned Video
Closed-captioning television, initially implemented to assist deaf and hearing-impaired viewers, has increasingly been found to be useful for other special needs students, such as English Language Learners (ELLs) and students with below-level reading comprehension.
Closed-captioned video is a powerful tool for motivating students to read and for aiding in the development of core language skills. For reluctant and struggling readers, closed-captioning can enhance and develop both reading comprehension (Goldman, 1993) and vocabulary acquisition (Koskinen et al., 1993; Xin and Rieth, 2001). In a study of "at-risk" elementary students with reading difficulties, Meyers and Lee (1995) found that "significantly more learning occurs for those students using closed-captioned video compared to those having traditional print materials" (p. 404). Closed-captioned video has also proved effective for teaching ELL students of all ages (Spanos and Smith, 1990; Parks, 1994). Such video can help students develop both language acquisition and content knowledge, as Neuman and Koskinen (1992) found: "Captioned television appeared to provide a particularly rich language environment which enabled [language minority] students to learn words incidentally through context as they developed concepts in science" (p. 104).
Teachers can employ a variety of strategies when using captioned video with at-risk or special needs students. The National Center to Improve Practice in Special Education Through Technology, Media and Materials (NCIP) summarizes the research to provide these tips for using video in the classroom:
- Find video that matches your curriculum and is of high interest to the students;
- Use short segments; anywhere from two to ten minutes is ideal;
- Preview the video and find appropriate vocabulary, idioms and/or content to highlight for the students;
- Pre-teach vocabulary or structures that the students may find especially difficult;
- Locate related texts to support your lesson;
- Create opportunities for repeated exposures.
One of the most important elements when teaching with captioned video is to provide ample opportunity for multiple viewings of the same video clip. The clip can be shown multiple times with all informational tracks available (visual, audio and captioning), providing students with repeated exposures to ensure comprehension. Alternatively, a teacher may decide to mute the sound for a second or third viewing, having students read the captioning aloud, thereby providing their own audio track. One teacher of English language learners divides his class into three groups and shows the video to each group in a different way: the program without captions, the program with captions and the audio only (without captions or video); next, he brings the class together for a discussion and lesson on what they have seen and heard (Parks, 1994).
Repeated exposures can enhance the acquisition of new vocabulary. In a sample lesson described by Koskinen et al. (1993), a teacher focused the repeat viewings on key vocabulary terms that were visually portrayed in the video, showing students the word first on a word card, then pausing the video when students indicated that they had found the word in the captioning in order to discuss what meaning could be gleaned from the visual image. After the screen reading, students focused on the key words in print, identifying them in a typed handout containing sentences from the video. The researchers found that while "rereading material for different purposes is often a difficult task for below-average readers," the students in the study eagerly reread the captions while rewatching the video (p. 6).
Captioned video can help interest students in reading material on related topics, and the transition from video to printed material can improve reading comprehension. Having related materials available for students to read after viewing the video is an important element in developing reading comprehension; the enthusiasm generated by the video often translates into an interest in reading related materials, comparing what is said in the video to what is found in the book and locating the vocabulary terms learned in the closed-captioned lesson. In another approach, a study by researchers at Vanderbilt found that reading comprehension was improved when students were given three similar passages to read, only one of which accurately described the content of the video clip. As they determined which was most accurate, students could review the video at any time. These "discrepancy" passages helped students to increase both comprehension and fluency (discussed in NCIP).
Teaching With Instructor-Created Video
Another use of classroom video that holds significant promise for students with disabilities is that of instructor-created videos. In a review of over 20 investigations of teacher-created video, Mechling (2005) identified a variety of video interventions shown to be effective at teaching functional and behavioral skills to students with disabilities ranging from mental retardation and autism to emotional and behavioral disorders, ADHD and learning disorders.
Creating videos for classroom use enables instructors to personalize and individualize instruction by focusing on specific tasks, environments and agents. Video feedback entails students watching their own performance of a task on unedited videotape, enabling them to assess their performance—including errors—and use this feedback to adjust their future actions. When provided as part of a treatment package, video feedback can lead to positive effects on social and communication skills. In contrast, video modeling involves students watching the performance of a skill by an adult or peer without a disability, which the student will then imitate by him- or herself at a later time. A specific type of video modeling, video self-modeling shows the student as the central figure of the video, performing the task at a more advanced level than he or she generally achieves. The instructor creates the video self-model by editing together video tapes, removing student errors or splicing together elements from different taped sessions to show only the desired performance. Reducing the amount of time required to create videos with peers or self-models, subjective point of view video modeling requires filming a video from the learner’s point of view and eye level, as if the learner were in that environment or performing that skill. This method can be used either to teach functional skills or as a means of "priming" students for upcoming events in order to reduce behavior problems. Finally, video prompting, in which students watch only a segment of the video at a time and then are required to respond in some way, can combine elements of all of the preceding interventions.
Video-based interventions have been found to be effective across a range of students of varying ages and disabilities, and for learners without strong visual processing abilities as well as for strong visual learners. As Mechling points out in her discussion of these interventions, instructor-based video programs are effective because they can present concepts systematically in a relatively non-distracting format that focuses the student on relevant details and that can be easily and frequently repeated. Such videos provide a predictability and controllability not often possible with simulations and community-based instruction.
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