Animal Welfare Professionals

I would like to get some feedback on the process used to make your foster or volunteer orientations into online videos. I would like to do this with some of the behavior classes that I've offered over the years in order to make them more accessible to our entire staff and volunteer base. I have several powerpoint presentations that I've made, and in the past, what we've done is schedule an actual time for a group of people to come in and I give them the presentation. This became tedious and time consuming, and it's something I want to avoid having to do in the future as our volunteer base grows.  

Things to think about:

• How did you go about actually making your audio? Did you just wing it, write a script for yourself, or record a presentation that you already did? 
• Hosting: Youtube? Or something else. 
• What equipment was used? Would a microphone be beneficial?

Anything else I should know? This would really help me out in being able to reach a broader audience. THANK YOU! 

In order to streamline our onboarding process for new fosters, Pet Haven created a 15 minute "introduction" video. Our new process is to send a link to foster applicants after they submit their online foster application. We ask that they view the presentation and then contact us if they are still interested in fostering. This has helped tremendously in weeding out applicants who are applying yet don't understand the time investment required to foster. In addition, we're able to highlight the FAQ's so that when we get to the final step of the process (a 1/2 hour "welcome visit" conducted at the applicant's home in which we provide our foster manual and have them sign the foster contract), they've already had the opportunity to get their basic questions answered. 

We created our video using Screencast-o-matic, which is a free tool to upload video and you can overlay voice recordings on a powerpoint or google slide presentation. For $10/month, you can upgrade to the ad-free version. You can also embed this in Youtube or keep it private. 

If you want to view our presentation, you can find it here: https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cFVi29o1v9

Thank you for sharing Pet Haven - what an excellent video!

LOVE this, @Pet Haven!

In terms of hosting, I'd definitely recommend YouTube. You'll have less technical limitations to help you reach that broader audience. YouTube just makes it really simple to send a link for people to watch the video from any device. Plus added control of things like the privacy of who is able to view the videos, have access to stats to see which videos are being watched the most and can even create video playlists if you want to share just one link to give access to multiple videos around a specific topic. You also can allow volunteers or fosters to leave comments & questions on the video that future viewers can also see. If they're asking the same questions, it'll help to save you time there too!

For equipment, a microphone is definitely beneficial if you plan to do a lot of videos and want to maintain consistent and clear audio. But I've also successfully recorded videos with a good pair of headphones that have a quality microphone built in. With headphones I usually just do a variety of tests in different rooms and playing it back to hear which room had the best "acoustics" using the same equipment.

Either way, recording these as videos sounds like a great idea and will totally help you save some time! Happy recording!

Thank you so much for your input! I am going to be working on it this weekend!