Tips n’ tricks section – Lars Egidius Helle, Creative Director, Mohive
In this edition of the newsletter I will use the opportunity to talk about the use of video in e-learning. From e-learning’s early days video was the main driver, first on laser discs, later on CD-ROMS. However, when e-learning went online in the late 1990s, the use of video vanished due to bandwidth issues.
Today, following the advent of YouTube, video is definitely back at centre stage in e-learning and should be considered as part of your toolkit when creating rapid e-learning. In this and forthcoming newsletters, I will share some tips on what to consider and how to use video in e-learning.
Avoid turning your e-learning into a TV programme
The first trick to effective use of video is to avoid the temptation of using your e-learning module as a placeholder for video that could be distributed using other channels. This means that you should write and edit your score for use in e-learning.
The simplest way of doing this is to use the same kind of technique that works well in non-video-based e-learning:
1. Find a situation in which your learning objective occurs. To illustrate, if you are creating a course for salespeople, create situations where the sales representative is directly interacting with a customer. That means showing the dynamic, not writing about it.
2. Make progress in your story in increments and let the user take part in it as it unfolds. That means that you stop the video and ask the user to interact before you go on. For example, in a course for sales staff, you could show a small piece of video about a customer coming into the store and asking to buy an advertised product. You can ask the learner to respond to this situation, encouraging them to think about how to maximise this sales opportunity.
3. Avoid showing long pieces of rolling video and then asking questions to check
whether the audience paid attention. This is not interactive and will produce poor learning outcomes, as the learning is passive. Short spurts of video with interaction that involves the learner in the story as it unfolds are better.
Fortunately, Mohive provides you with some effective features to help you with developing interactive video based e-learning that is still rapid.
These include:
- the ability to write the video script directly in Mohive
- uploading of video files just like uploading a picture
- and finally, dedicated video templates that make interactive video a breeze
How to utilise these templates will be the topic of my next tips ’n’ tricks section, so stay tuned. And if you have any questions or have some video content you would like to share with the community, please send it through.
Enjoy!
Lars