This post was inspired by an old colleague who sent me a note on a couple of days ago seeking some advice about getting his students to watch the videos he shares with them. It’s a topic that I’m asked about fairly regularly so I was happy to suggest a few tools. These are the three tools that I recommed today if you want to add must-answer questions into videos. These are questions that students have to answer in order to unlock each segment of a video that you share with them. 

Screencastify

If you have spent time to create a video lesson for your students, you’ll want to know that they actually watched it. With Screencastify’s video editor you can add interactive questions into your videos. You can do this with videos that you record with the Screencastify Chrome extension or with videos that you upload into your Screencastify account. Whichever type of video you choose to use, you can add multiple choice questions into the timeline of the video. In this short video I demonstrate how to add questions into your Screencastify videos.

EDPuzzle

For the last handful of years EDpuzzle has been my go-to recommendation for making flipped lessons. With a free EDpuzzle account you can add multiple choice, true/false, and short answer questions into videos you’ve made as well as videos that you find on YouTube, Vimeo, and other video sharing sites. When you add questions you can require that students must answer them in order to view each segment of the video. In the following I provide a complete overview of how to use EDpuzzle to create video lessons using videos that you find online.

Highlights of the video include:

• How to create an EDpuzzle account.
• How to create an EDpuzzle classroom via Google Classroom and without Google Classroom.
• How to make lessons with videos you’ve found online.
• How to make lessons with videos you’ve created.
• How students can access and respond to your lessons.

ClassHook Pause Prompts and Live Discussions
ClassHook is a service that you can use to find and share video clips according to topic, subject, and standard. Within ClassHook there are features called Pause Prompts and Live Discussions. Pause Prompts are timestamped questions that you add to video clips in ClassHook. When you’re showing a video to your class, the questions you’ve written as Pause Prompts will automatically pop-up at the timestamp you’ve specified. The video will stop and the question will appear full-screen in its place. You can then have a discussion with your students about the prompt.

Live Discussions builds upon Pause Prompts by incorporating an online response element for your students. When a Pause Prompt is reached you can have your students respond online as well as by speaking in class. Live Discussions generates a link and QR code for students to follow to land on a response page where they can answer the questions in the Pause Prompts. You’ll be able to see their responses in your ClassHook teacher account. Watch this video to see Pause Prompts in action.