A lightboard is a transparent whiteboard made of glass with internal lighting to make writing with colored markers glow. A lightboard allows a presenter to write and draw while maintaining eye contact to deliver course content in a natural and engaging manner.  Video is filmed through the glass and mirrored so the orientation appears correct to the viewer.

The lightboard in the NEC video studio in the Dudley Knox Library is simple and easy to use for recording video lectures. While instructors can use the lightboard just like a whiteboard, NEC videographers can add slides, images, charts, and other visuals to lightboard videos. NEC can edit videos in post-production to enhance engagement and clarity.

See how using a lightboard can make lecture videos more engaging and effective.

Explore how NEC can add images, slides, and diagrams to enhance the content and impact of lightboard videos.

Using a lightboard helps instructors create presentations that feel personal to the viewer and enhance attention and retention. Facing students while writing or drawing helps them stay interested in and engaged with the content of a presentation. Instructors can use gestures, facial expression, eye gaze, and body language to indicate where students should focus their attention at a given moment and to signal which content elements are especially important. This makes a lightboard an excellent tool for maintaining instructor presence, which is a critical factor in student success in distance learning.

Lightboards can also make presenting handwritten content more efficient for both instructors and students. The time instructors spend writing content can be sped up or cut from the final video to improve the pacing of a presentation. Mistakes and erasures can also be edited out, removing down time and distractions.

Because slides, images, charts, pre-recorded video, and other visuals can be inserted into a lightboard video, using a lightboard enables instructors to combine static and dynamic content to maximize student engagement. One study (Southard & Young, 2018) found that 56% to 65% of students surveyed preferred instructional videos made with lightboards over narrated PowerPoint lectures.

Instructors accustomed to using whiteboards will find using lightboards easy and natural. Lightboards have all the affordances of whiteboards, such as the ability to use color to organize material or highlight points of comparison and contrast. Consider these ideas for using lightboard videos for in-residence and distance learning courses at NPS:
 

• Make video lectures more engaging, natural, and personal with handwritten content.
• Draw and record original diagrams to create visual references on key concepts.
• Record short demonstrations explaining step-by-step procedures for solving equations. 
• Dynamically annotate images, schematics, or maps to combine visual and verbal content.
• Maintain onscreen presence while showing slides or videos in a picture-in-picture format.
• Customize shared or curated content with handwritten notes and additions.
• Flip the classroom: Record videos to prepare students for class discussions or lab sessions.