Facilitating Student Learning with Variable Speed Playback

Understanding Variable Speed Playback

Variable speed playback is an option in the Platform’s Media Player that allows students to speed up or slow down playback. Depending on the user’s individual needs, students can cover content quickly for review, or more slowly, for increased understanding and retention. Regular speed playback is 1x, but with YuJa’s Media Player, you can choose speeds from .5x — or half normal speed — to 8x. The “x” indicates how many times slower or faster than normal the video will play, so a one hour video at 4x speed will play in only 15 minutes. Users can easily change speed once or multiple times as they watch a video.

Speeding Up and Slowing Down Playback

Both speeding up and slowing down playback offer a number of advantages to students. Consider the following use cases:

Reviewing Recorded Lectures

Lecture capture isn’t just for online learners. Students may use lecture capture recordings to review classes they attended for improved understanding and retention. When watching a lecture they attended, they may not want to spend as much time reviewing; doubling playback speed allows a one-hour lecture to complete in only 30 minutes.

Preparing for Exams

When it’s time for midterms or final exams, students may want to rewatch several lectures as part of their study strategy. Working your way through a full semester or even half a semester of lectures is challenging at a normal pace, but much more manageable when sped up using variable speed playback.

Online Learning

Students that are using lecture captures without brick-and-mortar classroom time may find it helpful to be able to slow down playback during challenging lectures.  This can offer additional time for understanding and mastery, particularly of technical terminology.  The same strategy is effective for students who are catching up on a missed class.

Language Learners

Students learning another language are frequently able to master the material and understand lectures much more effectively when they can slow down playback. Reduced speed means slower speech and improved comprehension for these learners.

Variable speed playback is one way institutions can give students control over their learning materials.  Other features, like search inside video, search within audio captions, slides, notes, bookmarks and indices, all enable students to quickly search videos for keywords and find areas they need to revisit.