Photo of video production crew making film

Using Video in eLearning

The case for video increasing engagement is well known. Video is an essential ingredient in making engaging eLearning that enhances the user experience.

Audience Expectations

Audiences have a highly developed visual language due to exposure to other media and the internet. Styles change but we should never underestimate the importance of production value when it comes to creating video. Audiences are expecting more than a simple down the line message from CEOs within their eLearning courses. Highly engaging content is the key. Living up to these expectations may seem daunting and expensive but it’s possible to create great video material that meets your audiences needs without breaking the bank. However you slice and dice it, video grabs attention and enhances eLearning.

Style of video content

Live action, graphics, self taped, the world is your oyster. The video should be stylistically integrated with the rest of the eLearning module. Sometimes talking heads live action video despite being relatively cheap to create takes quite a while to play out its messaging and can often lose the audience quite quickly (see below on length of content). Self taped material whilst being truthful can also suffer from shaky camerawork and low production value.

Splash Interactive has the in house capability to create video content and we are a great advocate for graphic animation. It fits with the style of the module and delivers engaging content quickly. Graphic animation often leads out the style of the overall piece. One of our first clients came to us for eLearning creation because they had loved how our friendly graphic animation videos engaged their colleagues.

How much and when

It’s worth thinking about using video holistically in the eLearning module. The user experience should be seamless and the video elements should be properly embedded with the style and the flow of the learning. Make sure it fits and does it’s job as and when it’s needed. Too much video is too much! and may well dominate the other things that make eLearning great like interactivity and testing. Video is great for establishing mood and emotion, spread out amongst the learning materials.

Length of video content

Video should be kept short and effective, the longer it is the more likely we are to lose our audience – attention span is another factor about our audiences expectations, they expect it to be short and great! Also, as eLearning creators we don’t want to add anything into our eLearning modules that make them too long from a user experience point of view.

Efficiency of Video content

Video is an excellent story telling tool, a quick way to engage and create emotion and transfer information smoothly.

A video module followed by analysis or quiz, then followed by another video module or another eLearning device is highly effective. If the video content relies on the spoken word then a transcript or subtitles can help those differently abled learners and those who do not have sound.

Thinking long term

Structuring video elements into an eLearning project that may be re versioned or modified in some way: for example into other languages, requires forward planning. Graphic animation that features text is harder to unpick than material generated in Articulate Storyline.

Budget

Sticky subject. Video doesn’t have to be expensive. Sometimes it works to use colleague generated material (often with a bit of added edit magic from the eLearning agency) or relevant You Tube clips with the creators permission. Making sure your eLearning agency has the skill base to take on video production is important. Budget spent on graphic animation for your eLearning is a good investment as the assets created for the graphic animation can be used throughout the rest of the module when it’s created in Articulate Storyline.