Good audiovisual material for teaching?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a UK postdoc asks:

I would like to assign some audiovisual material to students in addition to 'normal' readings, but I am having trouble finding appropriate material. Is there a database of some sort where I can find videos, podcasts etc? Or what are other people's strategies?

Hmm...good questions! I sometimes use YouTube videos while teaching, which I've found to be a good resource, particularly because many videos appear to meet accessibility requirements (viz. transcription, etc.). Beyond this, though, I wouldn't call myself much an expert on finding good AV material. So, I'd love to hear from readers.

Is there any kind of useful database for finding this kind of content for teaching? And, more generally, how do you use AV material in your teaching, and how do you go about finding good content?

Comments

[Guy Crain]

I don't know of a database curated specifically for philosophy, but:

(1) I'd recommend the Wireless Philosophy channel as a fantastic resource for videos. Podcasts like Philosophy Bites, Philosophy 24/7, Philosopher's Zone, You Are Not So Smart, and Hi-Phi nation are also very good and consumable even for listeners with zero background knowledge. Podcasts that are a less "hand-hold-ish" (but still assignable, I think): The Free Will Show, New Books in Philosophy, Ethical Theory Review, and Elucidations.

(2) I routinely assign videos or podcasts as material required before class. The way I do it is create a quiz in Canvas (my college's LMS) and then, say, the first "question" is actually just the embedded video (or a bite-sized chunk of the video if it's much longer than 10 minutes). I set that as a multiple choice question only one answer ("I have watched the video"), and then the next few questions are multiple-choice/true-false about that video chunk specifically. I repeat that process until they've watched/listened to all the material relevant to having good class-preparedness, and I set the quiz to be due one minute before class starts.

I do this especially when a reading would be very complicated and very difficult to navigate for a novice. That's when I try to find if the author has been a podcast guest or given a video presentation of the material. It's nearly always the case that the podcast/video offers a much more "pre-chewed" version of the material. That way when they come to class, I can present the heavier, in-the-weeds version of the material to them. And then, they're well-prepared to write/discuss thought experiments/case studies related to the author's paper.