Making the most of course videos

Welcome again to the GRAPH Courses! We put a lot of care and resources into creating engaging and instructive videos to facilitate your learning journey. To make the most of these video resources, here are some tips to keep in mind:

1. Use two screens or arrange windows side-by-side

When watching most videos, we ask you to code with the teacher in real time.

For this to work best, you should ideally have two screens: one for the video, and one for your own code.

If you have only one screen, you can arrange the video and your RStudio side by side on your screen, as shown in the image below:

*Pictured: Side-by-side view with course video on the left and the student’s RStudio on the right*

2. Adjust playback speed to match your comprehension

Depending on how comfortable you are with the content, it may be helpful to speed up or slow down the video. Slowing down the video to 0.75x speed on the first watch can be particularly helpful. This slower pace allows many students to comfortably follow along.

*Pictured: Speed adjustment on the GRAPH Courses video player*

3. Pre-download videos for offline learning with poor internet

If you have a poor network connection, you may want to pre-download the course videos. To do this, click on the video title to go to the Vimeo source page.

At the bottom of the video, you will see a download button.

4. Revisit videos to solidify your understanding

You usually remember about 20-30% of a video when you first watch it. Therefore, it may be helpful to watch each video twice. The first time, you code along with the instructor at a slower speed. Then the second time, you speed up the video (up to 2x) to quickly revise the material and solidify your understanding.

That’s it for now. We will continue to share more tips and tricks to make the most of the course as we go along.