Video
When we think about video in eLearning we may think about anything from filming a person giving a presentation to an animated explainer video.
Without the right resources, skills and equipment, this type of production can cost money to develop and produce sub-standard results.
Producing videos can require more planning and logistics if there is filming that involves multiple parties like a videographer and an on-screen presenter. With mobile phone camera technology improving all the time, it is now possible to create good quality video with your average mobile phone. We also need to remember that without the right planning and support equipment like a tripod or microphone, the end product may not be up to the expectation set out by the project team.
Once the video has been filmed, we then need to edit the video and this can require certain skills plus special software like a video editing program.
When working with video we also need to be sure we are optimising the end video as best as we can to reduce the file size while also keeping the quality.
This is called “encoding”.
The Beginner’s Guide to Video Encoding, Decoding, and Transcoding
When working with video files rather than live video, encoders are used to compress and reduce the size of video content so that it can take up less storage space and be easier to transfer from one part of a video production workflow to another.
Styles of video
How do we know what type of video to create? Interestingly a fellow eLearner emailed me recently and wanted to get some ideas about this very thing.
I replied with this summary of how I would approach the type of video production to consider depending on the content and obviously the desired outcome.
Interviews
Sharing stories and experiences from individuals are great as interviews where an interviewer can guide the story through questioning, and can help to make it more conversational and relaxed instead of trying to remember a script. The interviewer can be off camera and the questions can be edited out and put at the bottom of the screen as text (optional If the interviewer is comfortable on camera then both interviewer and interviewee can be on camera)
You could also create a video from audio only, similar to something like this (this uses Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere)
Screenshares
Screenshare is great if demonstrating software training and working through an onscreen process or a presenter giving a presentation (similar to the videos at the beginning of the course).
Displaying the talking head in the corner brings life to the video.
Explainer Videos
Explainer videos can be great for more technical topics that require simple imagery or diagrams to help the explanation. I’m thinking of all the great explainer videos on YouTube that are used to talk through science and history topics.
At the end, it can come down to equipment, resourcing, on-screen talent and desired outcome.
One of our past students put this review of Video Scribe together using an explainer video
Interactive Video
Interactive video is a way to incorporate interactive elements within the video to give our learners decisions to make and ask questions. Some of the Authoring tools allow for the creation of interactive video experiences as well as H5P (as mentioned above, and a link below with a n example)
“Interactive video content type allowing users to add multiple choice and fill in the blank questions, pop-up text and other types of interactions to their videos using only a web browser.”