Streaming Video Librarians: Influencers in Pedagogy

There’s no question that the move to remote education during the pandemic has influenced pedagogy.  The open question that everyone’s asking is “which trends will stick?” In other words, which elements of remote education will become permanent best practices and which will be jettisoned as cases decrease and users return to some prior period practices?

Many libraries saw enormous increased demand for streaming video during the pandemic. For some libraries, remote education exposed just how many faculty still relied on physical media, either from the library’s collection or from their own personal collections.

This period also introduced some faculty to remote education for the first time, and many struggled with inadequate time to lesson-plan or adapt existing curricula.  Streaming video became an attractive alternative to lecturing via Zoom for many faculty members, also helping to fill class time previously allocated to in-person activities.

Post-pandemic realities

With limited staff and budgets, library staff were stretched to the limit to react to a large increase in video requests, particularly during 2020.  However strained, these pandemic-era expectations have established a new standard, and faculty are likely to expect libraries to source ongoing video requests at the same pace as during 2020-2021. 

As some learning returns to in-person, faculty weigh challenges and benefits of new media.

Common complaints by librarians are that streaming video is expensive, and faculty demand and library budgets for streaming video are not in sync.  Faculty often don’t understand why the library cannot provide every streaming video or database requested.  Although aggravated by the pandemic, balancing the demand for streaming video with budget sustainability had been a concern for many several years prior.

Streaming video and LMS are here to stay

Now that some courses are returning to face-to-face learning, many faculty are choosing to keep streaming video assignments on their syllabi, embracing the numerous benefits of the medium.  From saving class time to providing students the ability to watch and learn at their own pace, and seeing increased student engagement in the material to providing variety in learning styles – the positive learning outcomes are undeniable.

Another change the pandemic introduced was increased adoption of Learning Management Systems (LMS) by faculty, including utilizing the LMS for more tasks and elements of course administration than ever before. Faculty report spending increased time utilizing the LMS, whether to create assignments and/or assessments or to manage the elements of course administration (grading, etc.). Both this deeper reliance on the LMS and the complete integration of the LMS into course delivery seem likely here to stay.

Libraries have historically held a removed role from pedagogy – libraries are not instructional designers nor are they in the Offices of Learning Technologies, and they don’t influence course design or syllabus construction in most courses.  They have limited influence upon the actual administration of the LMS or in the selection and adoption of other campus ed tech tools, like Kaltura or Panopto. Similarly, many faculty don’t engage with the library when curating and selecting video content for their courses, relying largely on YouTube or commercial streaming services – practices that can introduce potential copyright violations and access equity issues. 

When libraries do partner with departments or faculty, it’s often with film or media studies, or another course area that aligns particularly well with video or with visual learning.  In fact, some librarians have outstanding relationships with their faculty and are truly partners in selecting and recommending video content to align to their syllabi.

Reconciling growing expectations

As faculty continue to adopt streaming video into syllabi and integrate that video into their LMS, libraries are expected to demonstrate metrics – despite their often limited role in workflows and activities. These metrics can include counter usage, cost-per-use, etc. and are intended to show that their streaming video collection development strategy is fully meeting the needs of faculty.

How can the library reconcile these growing expectations to manage demand, budgets and return on investment?  How can the library, whose role is to acquire video, negotiate license agreements and prices, and provide MARC+discovery for their video, close the gap between how the video is acquired and how it’s ultimately used and adopted into coursework

I’m frequently amazed by how much is demanded of video librarians and/or electronic resource librarians.  Librarians are constantly absorbing more and more job duties with less and less staff and support, and less and less resources and budget.  There aren’t enough hours in the work week to absorb also doing outreach to every faculty or department area that’s using video to let them know of new video investments that may fit their individual pedagogical needs, let alone help them successfully integrate or embed video into their LMS.

We believe that some of the burden of communication, operational management and measurement should shift to streaming video vendors.  Our commitment to be a true partner to libraries means listening, absorbing, collaborating and ultimately building together.  We must work to make our streaming video resources fit the ever-changing needs of faculty, including LMS integrations, accessibility tools and more.

Meeting faculty and students where they are

We must meet faculty and students where they are, especially those who are less experienced library users or who don’t routinely seek the support of the library to help them build course content.  We must help with outreach to faculty, making them aware of the investment the library has already made on their behalf.  Perhaps most importantly, we must help to attach learning outcomes to our streaming video resources, and make them fully integrated components of a syllabus, and not just a sterile Counter Investigation. 

Every time a student is assigned a video in their LMS and they seamlessly click a link and watch (via LTI or SSO or proxy) a documentary that inspires passion, changes their worldview (even just a tiny bit),  helps them understand an algebra concept or instructs them how to read an EKG, the library has contributed to that successful learning outcome.  Libraries are already vital influencers in pedagogy; they just need support in amplifying their outcomes. It’s time that streaming video vendors help them raise that megaphone.