As its name suggests, Vialogues is an online tool that encourages dialogues around video. Developed by the EdLab at Teachers College, Columbia University, the platform allows professors and students to post questions, reflections, and comments at specific points in time within a video clip.
How does Vialogues work?
The person creating the Vialogue (aka the “moderator”) uploads a video or brings one in from a repository such as YouTube or Vimeo. The Vialogue can be set up as public or as private to a particular group of people. To encourage active viewing, the moderator can:
- Add multiple choice and short answer questions at specific points in the video. Vialogues collates all the answers to the multiple choice questions and allows moderators to view them.
- Allow participants to add comments at any point in time in the video. Comments can have replies, allowing a conversation to ensue, and are time-stamped, making it easy to go to the video segment to which the comment refers.
Vialogues can be shared via links, or embedded in Blackboard courses or other sites using the HTML codes provided.
Who is using Vialogues at Hunter?
Professor Laura Baecher of Curriculum and Teaching has used Vialogues with students preparing to become teachers. Teacher candidates video-record lessons that they teach and share them only with their professors and field supervisors. Vialogues allows teacher candidates to review and reflect on their performance and to discuss areas for improvement with their mentors.
Laura presented her use of Vialogues at a recent ACERT lunchtime seminar (see video capsule above). ProfessorJeff Allred attended that lunchtime seminar and thought of a way in which the tool could benefit his students. Before the seminar was over, he had created a Vialogue!
Jeff has now used Vialogues with his students in English 759. The class annotated and discussed Dziga Vertov’s film, Man with a Movie Camera. Jeff posted guiding questions to which students could respond while watching the film. He also invited students to add comments and pose questions to which he responded.
How do I get started with Vialogues?
First create an account, then browse the “explore” section of the website to get ideas about how to use the tool. If you have questions, technical help is plentiful.
Do you see a use for Vialogues in your class? Let us know in the comments below.
I Love this idea of vialogues! It is such a better platform for students and everyone to interact on rather than text and/or pictures.
Imagine this for social media! This would be way better than youtube or snapchat. Snapchat is only limited to phones and would be more effective if computers could pick up on it as well like what vialogue seems to be able to do.
I would love to see something like this more easily accessible in the future for all social interactions. It brings so much more learning and accepting of information when more than one sense is interacting with new information.
Olivia.