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learners can watch this video for free to watch all of 1:29 minutes! if you would rather read a human-made transcription of the video, click here!
According to the video, cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is a standard and drug-free treatment for insomnia which offers long-term benefits without side effects. The video presents CBT-I as a preferable form of treatment to sleeping pills, THC, and alcohol, which is noted to make sleep quality worse (Walker 2021).
How I Chose the Video
Once I searched “Insomnia” and “Insomnia Education” in the YouTube search bar, this video was one of the first three to be recommended for me. There were limited options that felt informative enough to be considered as a candidate video to integrate into our lesson. But what would even be the point of including this video in the first place? In this post, I will explore this and more by answering four prompts.
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1. What kind of interaction would this video require? Does it force them to respond in some way (inherent)?
Part of what makes this video so appealing for both the instructor and the students is the passive attention required to engage with it. The video duration is 1:29, relatively short in comparison to alternative educational videos about insomnia on YouTube. When attention is not required to be held for an unreasonable amount of time. . When you consider the addition of this video to an already information-packed lesson on insomnia, anything longer than three minutes I imagine would risk losing the attention of learners and waste potential time for instructors to successfully achieve learning outcomes using alternative methods. Therefore, there is a limited level of interaction required with this learning activity which makes it so appealing for both parties.
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2. How might students respond on their own? What type of knowledge or skill would that activity help develop? What medium or technology would students use to do the activity?
Ideally, students could relate this video to their own habits. The content of the video is informative, clear, and could be relevant to the viewers real life. As scholar Anthony Williams (Tony) Bates notes, watching YouTube videos is primarily characterised as learner-generated. This means that if we incorporated this video into our lesson without any attached expectation for the student to reflect on the video with, the student is left to interpret it in any way. I think it would be effective if we incorporated this as a low-interaction video for informative reasons, but to achieve our learning outcomes of having the student understand what insomnia is (not just repeat back what the video says) and apply it in their own lives, the video would need to be accompanied by another interactive activity.
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3. How would feedback be given?
Learners could complete an analysis of their own sleep journals after it is complete and potentially connect it to the knowledge they gained from the video and other lecture content. Once connections have been drawn in long-form sleep journals, students can either talk amongst peers in the small group activity about what they learned about insomnia in relation to their own sleeping habits. This can be partly online and partly in the classroom in different ways. Students can physically write their sleeping journals or type them digitally. When sharing those reflections, students could either talk in a group in-person or on zoom in break-out groups. Alternatively, students who do not feel comfortable sharing in-person or on a call could submit their reflections on an anonymous public forum where instructor(s) and other students could interact with one another through comments.
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4. How would my pod reduce barriers?
My pod could reduce barriers by ensuring a transcript was created (in multiple languages), offer key take-aways, and provide a case study to put the video’s information on CBT-I into perspective. This case study could also offer a level of understanding for students who feel that they are unable to apply CBT-I to their own lives.
In thinking about other ways to incorporate this video into our lesson, I was interested to find that another one of my pod members reviewed the same video! Isaac in his post here offers a great way to keep students engaged that I did not think of: stopping the video to inform students as they watch. I do wonder, though, if this could potentially disrupt the learning process of some students. It might be challenging for some students to grasp the message of the video about the benefits of CBT-I without being introduced to the full flow. Perhaps, alternatively, the class could watch it all together or students could be required to watch it prior to the lecture, and then the instructor could play it while stopping to explain different parts.
While my other lovely pod member, Frankie, also suggested the incorporation of polls or quizzes in coordination with the video. Not only is this a great idea to keep learners entertained and engaged, but it puts them in a position (especially if they do this after watching the video) to actively recall the information they learned.
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References
Bates, A.W. 2019. โ9.6 Interaction.โ Pressbooks. October 10, 2019. https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/chapter/pedagogical-roles-for-text-audio-and-video/.
TED. 2021. โHow to Deal With Your Insomnia โ and Finally Get to Sleep | Sleeping With Science.โ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHKs2aVxOmQ.
Walker, Matt. 2021. โHow to deal with your insomnia — and finally get to sleep.โ https://www.ted.com/talks/matt_walker_how_to_deal_with_your_insomnia_and_finally_get_to_sleep/transcript.