Personalize Learning with Interactive Questions: A Tactical Guide for Teachers

Adding interactive questions to video content has the potential to be a transformative tool in education. Not only does it create a more engaging experience for students and provide teachers with valuable insights into student comprehension, but it also facilitates real-time assessment and offers perspective on individual student progress.

The beauty of interactive questions lies in their ability to act as lightweight assessment touchpoints that can power more personalized learning. Understanding how your students navigate and respond to these questions gives you immediate feedback on whether or not key concepts are resonating, or if further clarification is needed. Using the data from these interactive questions can identify concepts to spend more time on or students who may need more instruction, or where you might adjust the pace of learning. 

With Screencastify’s new interactive questions update, you can do so much more with your video content. Add short answer and multiple choice questions, easily sort responses by student or question or grading status, and add questions with no point value (which are great for formative assessment!). These tools and more help you connect with and assess students. Let’s check out how.

1. Creating video assignments

Assignments play a crucial role in assessing students' understanding and application of concepts. However, the challenge lies in making these assignments both meaningful and engaging. By adding interactive questions to videos, you can more easily transform videos into effective assessments or engaging assignments. These questions also serve as checkpoints, allowing students to engage actively with the content, apply their knowledge, and receive immediate feedback.

For example, in a video, an instructor might place an interactive question in the video such as, “How does the concept discussed in this video apply to a real-life situation or a problem you've encountered?” This prompt allows students to think critically, and encourages applying the knowledge they’ve learned, all while fostering engagement and enabling students to demonstrate their understanding of the material. 

Interactive questions on video assignments also give teachers the ability to speak to diverse learning styles. Interactive questions can provide a multi-sensory approach that accommodates different needs. Visual or auditory learners can all benefit from the dynamic nature of video assignments that incorporate interactive questions.

2. Pre-assessment

Before diving into new content, adding interactive questions to video can help gauge students’ understanding, which then allows you to better tailor instructions to individual or whole-class needs. Using interactive questions, teachers and educators can check for understanding, identify student’s misconceptions about material, and address them before they become ingrained, for example. Some other uses of interactive questions for pre-assessment insights could include: 

• Identifying and setting reasonable and achievable learning objectives and goals for the instructional period

• Designing quizzes or polls that target specific learning objectives to see where instruction should be emphasized

• Forming effective student groups based on pre-assessment performance to ensure that each student group has a balanced mix of skills and knowledge levels 

• Monitoring progress over time through regular use of interactive questions and comparing initial responses and later assessments

Interactive questions also foster a sense of participation and interactivity in any learning environment, and feedback from these questions provides educators with immediate insight into student comprehension. That’s information they can use to tailor the learning material to meet students where they are. 

3. Encouraging student reflection

Part of what keeps students engaged in their educational journey is a self-awareness of how content resonates with them. Using video with interactive questions can help educators get to the heart of this matter. Not only does incorporation of interactive, reflective questions help deepen students’ understanding of the material, it also enhances the feedback loop between educator and learner. For example, instructors could include a thought-provoking question on the video content, and ask students to relate the concept to their own experiences, consider its relevance in their lives, or draw connections to other topics. What’s more, interactive questions can help students gain a clearer understanding of their own learning process, which empowers them to tailor their education to meet their needs. 

Using interactive questions in video helps you better understand not only what content is resonating with students, but also how it is resonating. Using reflective interactive questions deepens students’ understanding of the material and enhances the feedback loop between you and the student. Here are some examples of what that might look like:

• Include a thought provoking-question on the video content and ask students to relate the concept to their own experience or consider its relevance in their lives.

• Ask students to discuss their understanding of the material as a group, which allows them to hear multiple perspectives and encourages collaboration among peers.

• Pose a scenario or question for students to reflect on during which they identify areas of strength and areas that need improvement

4. Demonstrating comprehension

Leveraging interactive questions on video facilitates a dynamic and effective means for students to demonstrate their comprehension of the material. Interactive questions prompt students to apply, analyze, and articulate their understanding of course content. By strategically placing questions throughout the video, educators can gauge students' comprehension at the critical points. and students are able to showcase their grasp of the material at their own individual levels. What’s more, interactive questions provide immediate feedback for both teachers and students, and provide the ability to correct misconceptions or misunderstandings sooner rather than later. Here’s what that can look like:

Ask a question for students to respond to key principles or concepts, explain each, and provide an example to demonstrate their understanding such as: , “What are three key principles/concepts you consider most critical from this video? Explain each briefly and provide an example to demonstrate your understanding." Not only does this help students learn how to prioritize information, but also to articulate their understanding of the material, and apply what they’ve learned. It’s not just recall, interactive questions allow students to put their critical thinking skills to use!

5. Gathering feedback

Adding interactive questions to your videos is not only a great tool to use with students, but also to use with colleagues and parents. They can serve as an easy bridge between you and those outside of your classroom, and are gateways for feedback. Some ways to leverage interactive questions for feedback might be using interactive questions for:

• Use interactive questions on video to share lesson plans with colleagues for feedback
• Add a question to your video to ask what topics your team wants to see covered at your next meeting, or to choose a date to gather
• Give parents the opportunity to respond in a structured way to the video resources you share

Interactive questions benefit the whole classroom

Adding interactive questions to video helps create more personalized learning. Screencastify’s new and improved interactive questions makes it easier than ever for educators to better identify content and learning gaps, and better create video content that excites and engages students. Try adding a question to one of your videos today.

Screencastify is a key tool to help educators elevate student learning through video. Start using Screencastify for free today!