Video learning content could be one of the most impactful tools in your teaching arsenal. Today, 83% of teachers believe that educational videos benefit both learners and educators.
The most successful video content should be engaging, informative, and helpful for learners at any stage of education. However, this cannot be accomplished without conscious effort.
There are several best practices for leveraging engaging video content, focused around organization, management, and simple methods of reaching learners.
Engaging learning content and its benefits
Studies suggest that engaging learning content can dramatically increase learning outcomes. There are three suggested benefits:
- Reducing cognitive load. Learners are more capable of extracting and using immediate memories for short- and long-term use.
- Enhancing educational engagement. Content that is interesting to viewers may motivate them to absorb and apply new knowledge more effectively.
- Assisting active learning. By having a more immersive and engaging experience through video, learners can maintain more agency over their studies.
Engaging content has the potential to enhance, support, and encourage better outcomes for learners of any age.
Thirteen ways to make engaging learning content
The most engaging educational content adheres to at least ten of the following thirteen factors.
1. Conversational tone
Videos that lean into casual and less-formal presentations may be more engaging to learners. In fact, studies suggest that conversational tones may improve learning outcomes for those acquiring foreign language skills.
Encourage educators to speak in simple, easy, uncomplicated terms. Avoid the trap of being too stiff or formal in your content compositions.
2. Short video lengths
Educational content should be kept short, sweet, and concise. Experts suggest that videos should stay between six and twelve minutes long.
Think about how you can break down concepts or topics into manageable chunks. It may be beneficial to create chapters or small modules that cover a large subject.
3. Audio and visual elements
Both webinar-style and presentation-based content should use a mix of audio and visual elements to hold viewers' attention.
Use visuals such as animations and charts to condense complex information. Add applicable audio, such as music, ADR, and sound effects.
Keep in mind that your auditory and visual video elements should be complementary and not redundant. If they don't belong or don't make sense, don't add them.
4. Interactive elements
Interactive content is engaging, efficient, and cost-effective. It enables learners to manipulate, control, and interact directly with the video.
You may want to add questions and polls to your educational videos to encourage learner interaction. You could also integrate with third-party apps that enable you to add comments, questions, and even video responses directly to preexisting videos.
5. Ease of access
Content that is easy to access reaches the largest possible pool of learners.
First, post your videos in a centralized location where users can access the footage at scale. Next, create transcripts or closed captions for each video. These enable all learners to access and absorb your content as intended.
6. Guiding questions
Questions help learners remain active and engaged with the content. They also provide a framework for educators to gauge understanding and enhance the learning experience.
When creating educational videos, your educators should ask at least one question per video. Viewers should then have the opportunity to respond via video, text comment, or poll.
7. High organization
Organized content is successful content. A video platform enables moderators to locate and edit videos at scale, while also making it easier for learners to find specific content.
This may be more effective when accomplished through a cloud-based platform, like Warpwire.
8. Use of signaling
Signaling prepares learners to absorb critical pieces of information as they view educational content. This auditory or visual process may include on-screen text, highlighted words, or sound cues to ensure that viewers are following along.
You may want to add specific audio tones that highlight important points or to include symbols or images that visually alert learners to important material.
9. Speed of talking
Studies find that the speed of an educator's speech has dramatic effects on learning outcomes.
Instruct educators to slow down and pause between sentences, focusing more on delivery than rapidity of speech. Closed captions may be a beneficial aspect of this.
10. Footage quality
Learners are more likely to pay attention to content that has high-quality video footage.
Pre-recorded videos should have a minimum quality of 1080p, while streamed or live videos should have 480p at minimum.
11. Playback options
Flexible playback options are essential to all learners. These include watching videos at different speeds, accessing closed captioning, and even toggling an autoplay feature.
Additionally, ensure that your videos can be played across a wide variety of devices, including laptops, tablets, and mobile phones.
12. Term searching
The use of metadata allows for easy searchability both inside and outside of your organization's educational content.
When tagging your videos, be sure to include various terms that viewers might use when searching. These may include subject matter, intended audience, and other relevant topics.
13. Tracking analytics
Analytics provide educators with key insights into how their content is being received and used. It's best to select a video platform that has native analytics features, preferably with the ability to track video views, completion rates, average watch time, drop-off points, and more.
Dedicated time and effort must be spent to meet and exceed each of these thirteen factors. Engaging learning content cannot be created in a vacuum and requires a large amount of attention to detail.
The best way to develop learning videos that foster success for students is to lean on cutting-edge solutions that offer adaptable content engagement tools, which include platforms like Warpwire.
How to make engaging learning content with Warpwire
Thousands of organizations have trusted Warpwire as a leading management platform for engaging learning content.
Engaging learning content has never been easier to create, manage, and deploy at scale.
Warpwire’s video platform provides analytics to help you track media assets, media libraries, and system-wide usage. Designed to explore engagement, Warpwire’s reports provide deep insight into how your institution interacts with media.
To see how we can help you better leverage your video content, get in touch with us today!
