Bring Your Course to Life with NBC Learn Videos

by Veronica Sanchez, Instructional Designer

In early February, TTU's IT department brought in NBC Learn's Education Specialist, Melissa Cail, to give Texas Tech an informational session on this great resource. She gave an overview of some practical uses for NBC Learn videos:

• Engage with current events
• Direct instruction
  • Different voices telling an anecdotal stories
  • Visual representation of the topic
• Application
  • Analyze case scenarios from news

Whether you use NBC Learn regularly or haven't ever heard of it, it is a great tool to incorporate into teaching. Not only does it provide opportunities to engage your students with real world examples of your content, NBC Learn videos could be used in various teaching methods.

Benefits of using NBC Learn:

• Short 1-6 minute videos
• Links don't get broken
• Clip tool
• Captioned
  • Videos less than 3 years old are captioned in multiple languages
• Seamless embedding from within Blackboard
• Media Player
  • Able to download unlimited videos for offline viewing
• Create Playlists
  • Curation of vids for a course/topic
  • Shareable link
• Auto generates citations
• Subject Guides
  • Arts & Humanities
  • Business & Management
  • Health & Wellness
  • US History
• Updated daily with resources
• Easily embeds into Blackboard

The Guided Tour Video shows how the site is organized and covers the Clip Tool and downloading the media player (the panel to the left is great for navigating the tour).

Want to give NBC Learn a try?

• From anywhere:
  • Navigate to nbclearn.ttu.edu and enter your eRaider username and password.
  • Access through Blackboard: from within any course, click on 'Browse NBC Learn' in the Tools menu.
• On campus only:
  • Navigate to highered.nbclearn.com.
  • Access NBC Learn K-12 site.

The Worldwide eLearning Instructional Design Team has great examples of how TTU faculty are using NBC Learn in the classroom and online curriculum. Contact us at elearning.id@ttu.edu if you have questions about NBC Learn or any other aspect of designing your online course.