If It Can Be Learned without Looking at the Screen, Why Use Video?

There's nothing like a marketing claim that relies on scary statistics to help you look at an issue with cynical eyes. But it is hard to be a cynic without having a belief in the ideal. Take the tale that follows. It tells how three marketing emails about educational video, viewed cynically, advance a simple, but often overlooked, educational video ideal.

Three Emails, One Campaign

Below are excerpts from three e-mails from the same outfit. Together they woke my inner curmudgeon. Read them and you'll see why.

___ Email One Received, July 10, first two paragraphs __

Did you know only 7.5% of?your training videos?are actually watched by viewers??Yes, that number is correct –?7.5%. Majority of viewers are skimming through your video, listening while doing something else, or?ignoring them completely.

Now imagine if you were able to provide a navigable storyline with your video to viewers. Imagine being able to share specific topics from within your video so viewers can jump straight to where you want them to go in the video.

___ Email Two Received, July 17, first two paragraphs__

I’m following up on the email [from July 10].

In our conversations with Learning leaders across multiple industries, a large majority agree that 90% of viewers are skimming through their learning videos, listening while doing something else, or?ignoring them completely.

Now, imagine if you were able to provide a navigable storyline with your video to viewers. Imagine being able to share specific topics from within your video so viewers can jump straight to where you want them to go in the video.

__ Email Three Received, July 24, first two paragraphs__

Did you know only 7.5% of your training videos are actually watched by viewers? Yes, that number is correct – 7.5%. Majority of viewers are skimming through your video, listening while doing something else, or ignoring them completely.

[Vendor Redacted]’s AI solution?can keep your viewers engaged within your video, improve learner retention, and eventually increase renewal/upsell rates.

Video, What is It Good For?

__My thanks-but-no-thanks reply__

We already make videos with a navigable story line. We sometimes do it a la DVDs, where learners can see a collection of the acts that they can go back to -- or forward to. Or we use the good old fashioned hamburger menu, which works well with a topic broken down into a series of shorter videos.

And we have clients who use interstitial questions. In some cases they're required so students have to answer before the next segment of a video plays.

But mostly we ask our client this -- if a student can learn what they need from just the transcript, what purpose does the video serve? If there is not something in the video they need to see in order to understand what they are hearing, or what the transcript says, then the video is inherently optional from the student point of view.

So the real question is less about navigation and interactivity, and more about making the video essential. For example, a video on how to perform an essential skill will be watched if that is the best way to see the skill demonstrated.

-- end of email reply --

Speaking as a Learner: Essential vs. Inessential

Essential: I just watched several videos on how to remove wood rot from an outdoor window sill, apply wood hardener, and then how to mix and apply a fast setting wood filler. I had to see to understand. I could not just listen. I could have read an illustrated step by step guide, of course, but the video conveyed more detail of the kind I needed, akin to the difference between reading a recipe and seeing a dish being prepared on cooking show.

Inessential: Meanwhile a work-required training where the video featured two talking heads pretending to be a newscaster and an interviewed expert proved eminently skip-able. I skimmed the transcripts instead for required end of video quiz answers, and was decidedly not a member of the 7.5% who watched it through. The videos were inessential to passing the required quizzes that determined completion.

Does This Mean No Video Ever That Can Be Listened To and Not Watched?

Never say never. The classic webcam video of a course instructor welcoming students -- Talking Head 101 -- should not be abandoned, for example. The purpose of those videos is human connection -- distant students seeing their instructors, hearing their voices, getting to know them a bit.

But for the same instructor, why record a seven minute lecture, if the students can skip it. Or can download your slides with notes. Or can skim the transcript instead? And with each options, do just as well in the course?

Too often there is a push for video for video's sake under the mistaken belief that without video, students will get bored. That kind of thinking forgets that boring video will bore students.

Video Coercion Doesn't Make Video Better

By video coercion, I mean videos that embed interstitial questions -- a multiple choice question, a drag and drop question, or other auto-scored item -- and also require students to answer them before going to the next segment of video. Too often, this is the instructional design equivalent of the harried parent pulling the car over on the way to something or someplace the kids in the back seat don't want to go, and declaring, "You're going to go, you're going to shut up about it, and you're going to like it. Or so help me..."

I've taken several required trainings for companies I've worked for that used the coercion approach. Fast forward is my friend. And half the time, the questions are passable without even listening to the video or even skimming transcripts because the questions are poorly designed.

But even where the questions are more difficult, searching the transcript and plugging in is faster and less annoying than watching videos that also are often cheesy, stilted, or otherwise dull. As well as inessential to successful completion.

If the video is inessential, there is nothing magic about required questions. Though it does make for comforting data if you like data theater in the same way some people in airports like security theater.

Forcing learners to answer interstitial questions will give you data that the interstitial questions have been answered. It may provide correlating data that the video was played all the way through. But the data doesn't necessarily mean learners engaged the video nor retained what the questions asked.

Can Students Pass Without Buying the Book?

When I worked for Bedford/St. Martin's, now an imprint of Macmillan Learning, faculty often observed (okay, sometimes they were complaining) that students did not buy, much less read, required textbooks.

My question back to them was always: Are they able to pass your course without reading the textbook? And almost always, the answer was yes.

To the chagrin of my colleagues in sales, I would say, "then why require the textbook?"

The same holds for video. Maybe more so.

If only 7.5% are viewing the video, if 90% are skimming, listening only, or ignoring, how do you make and use video that is instead essential, compelling, and attention holding?