8 Strategies to Promote Student Engagement in Higher Education

strategies to promote student engagement

You're already ahead of the curve if you're using video as one of your strategies to promote student engagement. Dubbed the "Netflix generation" by the media, today's college students grew up with a steady stream of video content available to them on-demand on any device.

College students aren't just watching videos to keep up with their favorite entertainers; they're also using it to learn new skills. According to Think With Google, 67% of millennials and 80% of Generation Zers use YouTube to become more knowledgeable about something. Furthermore, 68% of Generation Zers say that YouTube has helped them improve their skills or gain new skills.

Although keeping students engaged may seem like an uphill battle, when used correctly, video effectively promotes student engagement in higher education. Keep reading to learn how to maximize student engagement with your school's video content.

1. Establish a Personal Connection with Your Students through Video

The odds are that your students are already using video to improve or acquire skills. However, that doesn't necessarily translate into them engaging with the video content produced by your university. Producing video content isn't enough to ensure student engagement. Students will learn from videos on other platforms if your university's video content isn't relevant to their lives.


Establishing a personal connection with your students is one of the most effective strategies to promote student engagement with video content. Professors can develop a personal relationship with students by appearing in videos and tailoring them to their interests. Providing personalized video feedback on assignments and tests is another way that professors can use video to establish personal connections with their students.

2. Create Videos That Solve Problems and Answer Questions

College students turn to videos on YouTube and other social media platforms to learn new skills because these videos answer their questions or help them solve problems. If a video doesn't accomplish its task, they move on to the next video in the queue.

Creating video tutorials that help students solve challenging problems that they can't figure out on their own is an effective way to encourage student engagement with your university's video content. Generation Z and millennials prefer YouTube videos to textbook learning. If your university's video content provides students with useful information, they'll keep coming back for more.

3. Create Compelling Content

Your university's video content competes with YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms for your students' attention. If your content isn't compelling, students will go elsewhere. Using video content to bring your school's courses to life is among the top strategies to promote student engagement.

For example, you can use video to help students visualize an event or person they have read about in their textbook, including the necessary historical context. You can also create a video about the Do's and Don'ts of writing a research paper. How-to and instructional videos are compelling content to keep your students engaged.

4. Build a Library of Video Content

Building a library of video content makes it easy for your students to access video content on-demand wherever they are in the world. Grouping your video content by topics will enable students to find what they're looking for quickly. Warpwire makes it easy to create a library of video content from the media libraries page on its platform.

From this page, you can edit your library's settings, create customized thumbnails, copy content, and delete or add content to your university's media library.

5. Use a Lecture Capture System to Share Classes Immediately

Today's students are accustomed to accessing online video content immediately and expect the same from university video content. If you wait too long to upload new video content, your students may look for the information elsewhere.

Using a lecture capture system allows students to access university lectures immediately after the class is over, enabling them to learn at their own pace on their own schedule from their own tablets, smartphones, or computers. From multi-source capture to live broadcasts and capture from a mobile device, Warpwire provides several tools for capturing video and uploading video content.

6. Make It Easy for Professors to Create and Share Video Content

Making it easy for professors and staff to create and share engaging content will help ensure student engagement with your school's video content. Universities should prioritize training and ongoing support for staff on creating and sharing videos that promote student engagement.

7. Optimize Video Content to Work across Various Devices

Your students access your school's video content from various devices, including smartphones, tablets, and computers. Therefore, universities should ensure that their video content is optimized for viewing across devices. If students can't access their videos from their mobile devices, they are less likely to view them.

Browsing and searching for videos should be intuitive. Your school should ensure that video content is appropriately tagged so students can quickly find what they need.

8. Encourage Students to Create Content

One of the most powerful strategies to promote student engagement is empowering students to become content creators. Give students the option to create and share their videos with classmates or the greater university community. With Warpwire, students can share their content with student groups. Another way to encourage students to become content creators is by assigning them video tasks instead of text-based assignments.

Final Thoughts

More and more universities are harnessing the power of video content to reach their students. Creating video content isn't enough to ensure student engagement in higher education, however. Instead, universities must have a strategy to promote student engagement with video content. By following the strategies outlined in this article, your school will be well on its way to increasing student engagement with video content.

Warpwire's video platform provides analytics to help you track media assets, media libraries, and system-wide usage. Designed to explore engagement, Warpwire's reports provide deep insight into how your institution interacts with media.

To see how we can help you better leverage your video content, get in touch with us today!