Webinar recordings - what's missing?

Photo by Samantha Borges on Unsplash

The past couple of years have seen an explosion in the number of webinars aimed at educators. Many of these are recorded and many recordings get many more views than the original live session. However, watching a recording is a very different experience to participating live. Live webinars feature interactive elements like chat, polls and external tools and those are generally missing from the recordings. What's left is the content minus a lot of the discussion. Here are a few thoughts on what's missing and suggestions on how to make recordings more valuable.

Chat.

In many webinars the chat contains valuable comments, links and information that offer added value. It's a space to share ideas and experience and sometimes the chat is more interesting than the speaker. I used to use Adobe Connect and there the chat is included in the recording, raising the value considerably, often including lots of valuable links to related articles and projects. Some people focused on the chat during the live session and watched the recording to hear what the speakers said. However in Zoom the chat is not included in the recording and as a result an important element of the webinar communication is lost. I can understand that including the chat in the recording requires the approval of all participants and that this was not fully respected before. You can, of course, download a text file of the chat but that needs to be edited and converted so that the links become active and unnecessary comments removed. I would like to see the return of the chat window in the recording, maybe with the option to anonymise the names of those commenting.

Context

Participants' anonymity in recordings is important but it can backfire. In Zoom recordings the names of those who appear are hidden and so it's not always clear who is speaking. You see the face and hear the voice but who is it? Another issue is that the speakers refer to comments in the chat that viewers of the recording cannot see or the results of a poll that are invisible in the recording. That's why it's important to read out the comment first before answering it. It's very frustrating to hear comments like "Thanks for that insightful comment Anna" and not tell us what the comment was. Many presenters are unaware that the results of a poll are not shown in the recording so please avoid saying, "as you can see from the poll results ..." Awareness of what is recorded and what it will look like is essential.

Video

It's important to be aware of what is being recorded. Whoever initiates the recording must make sure that they stay in speaker view so that the speaker is in focus. It's easy to forget this and by accident you show the full gallery of participants in the recording with the risk that one of them does something distracting, forgetting that they are in full view. At the same time it can also be effective to switch briefly to gallery view at some point to show viewers of the recording that there were many people present in the session. That requires the consent of the participants of course but it gives a sense of community to the recording, that you are part of an event. Otherwise the recording can be focused on one face for lengthy periods and there is no sense that anyone else was present.

Editing. 

Many of us tend to just upload an unedited recording and share the link. Watching a recording means that you often have to press the forward wind button to skip the small talk and transitions. An edited version of maybe 25 minutes with the key points would be the best option and get more attention than a long and 60 minutes, warts and all. Watch a recording and you'll be surprised how much time is spent on pleasantries, introductions and transitions. Important for the flow of the live event but irrelevant in the recording. An edited version should also include captioning. All that takes time of course, something that most teachers lack, but the value of the recording is increased significantly.