This month’s blog post was contributed by Jenni Breems, Dordt University

One of the things that I appreciate about OER is the collaborative spirit that sparks creativity and invites others into the creation process. In 2025/2026, I worked with Dr. Kathleen VanTol, Professor of Education at Dordt University, to edit and publish her book JONAH: A Positive Behavior Strategy on the Manifold open publishing platform. As we worked together, it became clear that video interviews with local special education teachers would enhance the book’s content. Videos could reinforce module content and allow readers to hear directly from practicing teachers and other experts. In this blog post, I will describe the process of working with the author and a student filmmaker to create, edit, and add video content to the JONAH project.

The Idea

It began with a question. “Wouldn’t it be great if we added a video interview with someone who is co-teaching? That would help other teachers to see how co-teaching works in a real-life situation.”  Kathleen knew a former student who was actively co-teaching in a middle school classroom. As the book progressed, plans developed for video content to supplement each module.

Grant Funding

Kathleen applied for and received internal grant funding from Dordt University to hire a digital media student for the filming and editing. She worked with a digital media professor to identify a qualified student and propose fair costs for the student’s labor. Philip Goetz joined the OER project as a student videographer.

Permissions and Interview Set-up

Kathleen contacted local educators and colleagues who could speak to the content in the modules of the JONAH project. She obtained permissions from each of them and their schools. All filming in K-12 schools was done with the firm guideline that no minors would appear in the background of any films. Scheduling needed to accommodate the teacher, Kathleen, and Philip, so most of it was done shortly after the school day ended. Kathleen sent each interviewee questions in advance with links to the relevant modules in the JONAH project. This allowed the interviewees to better understand the project and the questions they would discuss.

Filming and Editing

Kathleen and Philip spent approximately an hour with each interviewee. Filming equipment was kept to a minimum –  just 2 cameras with tripods and 2 microphones. This allowed for ease of set-up when filming on location in schools. Philip edited each hour of film so that the final videos were less than 10 minutes long. He estimated that it took approximately 6 hours of editing for each 10-minute segment.

Uploading to Manifold

The completed film segments were shared with me via Microsoft Teams. Before posting, I reviewed them for accuracy. For example, the titles and names of the interviewees were swapped in two segments. I also asked Philip to create a standardized final slide that could be included with each video segment. Then, I uploaded the segments to YouTube so that they could more easily be embedded in Manifold, the publishing platform for the JONAH project. In Manifold, I added metadata to each video segment to give credit to the participants, specify Creatives Common licensing, and maintain common keywords for searching. After that, each video was embedded in its corresponding module in Manifold. We placed the videos near the end of the modules as a way to summarize and extend the material that the modules covered.

Presenting to an On-Campus Audience

At Dordt, internal grant funding requires some sort of public presentation of the grant-funded project. To meet this requirement,  Kathleen, Philip, and I gave a 30-minute presentation in July to an internal audience of employees and students.

Learning Together

The presentation highlighted our mutual learning and contributions to the project. Philip and I learned about strategies for positive behavior for children of all abilities. Kathleen and I learned that filming and editing video is more time-consuming than we realized. Kathleen and Philip learned that there are lots of steps involved in documenting permissions, making content discoverable, and promoting a published work after it is completed.

In summary, adding video content to the JONAH project was a positive collaboration. It enhanced the written materials with video interviews by local teachers. It allowed a student videographer to gain work experience. And the required on-campus presentation provided an opportunity to showcase current faculty work in OER space.

References

VanTol, K. (2026). JONAH: A Positive Behavior Strategy (Version 2). Center for the Advancement of Christian Education; Dordt University. https://manifold.open.umn.edu/projects/jonah