Exploring VC3: Collaborative, Secure, and Inclusive Video Coaching for Schools
Last week, we unveiled VC3, the latest version of our video coaching platform. We shared how VC3 streamlines collaboration, enables coaching anytime, anywhere, and provides powerful new tools to accelerate and amplify collaboration.
Today, we’re excited to dive deeper into additional features that make VC3 a game-changer for teachers, coaches, and their colleagues. These features focus on elevating the user experience for all educators.
Elevating the video coaching experience for educators
At the heart of VC3 lies our commitment to continuous improvement, driven by valuable feedback from our user community. We’ve re-imagined key aspects of the platform to create a more intuitive, efficient, and enjoyable experience for educators and coaches alike.
Enhanced Explorations: Fostering collaboration and creativity
One of the most popular features within the video coaching platform is Explorations. An Exploration is a versatile framework for organizing group learning experiences. Think of it as a coaching management system for implementing best practices for video learning with just a few clicks.
Explorations allow coaches to create a structured learning process within their PLCs. Coaches can modify each Exploration based on group goals. Within the process, they can ask teachers to incorporate video evidence, provide peer feedback, analyze an example video, or examine other relevant artifacts.
In VC3 we’ve enhanced the Explorations feature, making it easier than ever for educators to engage in collaborative learning.
For example, the reflection and feedback process isn’t one-way in schools and sometimes teachers want interim feedback outside of a formal coaching schedule. With Explorations in VC3 now teachers can send a video to a coach and include questions or requests for feedback. VC3 notifies the coach that their feedback has been requested. They can add comments, answer questions, and send the insights back to the teacher, accelerating the feedback process.
With these enhancements, Explorations are more useful than ever. Coaches and teachers can collaborate seamlessly, enhancing professional growth anytime, anywhere.
Strengthened security and ease of use
In the fast-paced world of education, forgetting or losing passwords during critical moments can be a real headache. VC3 eliminates that pain with a fully passwordless authentication system.
Educators can click to sign in with their Google or Microsoft login or with a magic link sent to their email inbox.
Why go passwordless?
- Enhanced security. Say goodbye to weak passwords and the anxiety of potential breaches. VC3’s approach ensures robust protection for your school’s valuable data.
- Improved access control. If a staff member leaves the school or district and their email access is removed, they will not have access to the VC3 platform.
- User-friendly logins. No more juggling multiple passwords or resetting forgotten ones while losing precious instructional time. With VC3, simplicity reigns supreme—just the way it should be.
Simplified onboarding and reliability
In addition to enhanced security, VC3 simplifies onboarding and delivers reliable performance, saving precious time for educators.
With years of education technology experience, we understand the significance of first impressions. That’s why we’ve made the invitation and registration process a breeze for platform administrators. New users can seamlessly join the VC3 community.
In addition, in a world where time is scarce, reliability matters. Since launch, VC3 has maintained an impressive 99 percent success rate on video uploads. With seamless, reliable experiences in VC3, teachers and coaches can focus less on troubleshooting and more on what truly counts: professional growth and student success.
Enhancing video coaching accessibility for all educators
At Edthena, we believe that great professional development should be accessible to everyone. With the launch of VC3, we’re taking significant strides to ensure that our platform is not just powerful, but truly inclusive.
Automated video captions for classroom videos
Our commitment to inclusivity is woven into VC3. We’ve implemented industry-leading automated video captioning, complete with accurate labeling between teacher and student voices (a must for busy classrooms).
Whether you’re hearing-impaired, a non-native English speaker, or simply someone who benefits from visual reinforcement of audio content, these captions ensure that nuance and insight are preserved in your professional development journey.
Inclusive visual design
We recognize that visual impairments, including color blindness, can significantly impact user experience. That’s why we’ve carefully considered color contrast and implemented design choices that ensure important information and functionality are clear and accessible to users with various forms of color vision deficiency. No educator should miss out on crucial feedback or insights due to the way colors are perceived.
Compatible with assistive technology
Some educators require assistive technologies to access digital platforms. We’ve built VC3 with those educators in mind. Behind the scenes, we’ve adhered to current technical standards (WCAG 2), ensuring compatibility with a wide range of assistive technologies. This means that whether educators are using screen readers, alternative input devices, or other adaptive tools, VC3 is ready to work seamlessly with their preferred method of interaction.
By making VC3 more accessible, we’re not just improving our platform – we’re fostering a more inclusive educational community where every voice can be heard, and every educator can thrive.
Elevating video-based instructional coaching to support the needs of today’s students and educators
In total, the VC3 enhancements reflect our dedication to creating a platform that meets the needs of educators today and anticipates the challenges of tomorrow. With VC3, we’re not just updating features; we’re elevating what teachers and coaches can accomplish with video-based coaching and professional development.
VC3 offers a scalable, innovative solution to support ongoing teacher development. It addresses common challenges in professional learning by providing flexible, data-driven tools that translate into sustained instructional improvement.
If your school or district is ready to empower educators to collaborate more efficiently, engage in meaningful professional learning, and improve student outcomes contact us today to get started!
Seeking a tool for teacher self-reflection?
While VC3 is a collaborative, video-based coaching solution, Edthena also offers an on-demand coaching platform that walks teachers through guided self-reflection and provides curated classroom strategies. AI Coach amplifies existing coaching capacity. It is ideal for providing teachers with instructional coaching between in-person sessions.
