educational video

Simple Overhead Draw-and-Talk Videos Are a Good Idea

Fiorella & Mayer (2016) conducted a series of experiments that show the effect of seeing diagrams being drawn vs. showing and/or pointing at already-drawn static diagrams in (short) video lectures. The paper appears to be a summary of a PhD project.

Seeing a diagram being drawn improves learning compared with instruction that uses a static, complete diagram, even if the instructor points at parts of it during their explanation. This is probably because the combination of drawing and talking naturally applies the multimedia learning principles of signalling, temporal contiguity, and segmenting.

Digital Khan-style videos where you see the lines appearing without the instructor’s hand were less effective than real life videos where you actually see the instructor that’s doing drawing. Seeing only the instructor’s hand seems to be slightly better than seeing their (upper) body.

From the conclusion:

Overall, this research suggests that observing the instructor draw diagrams promotes learning in part because it takes advantage of basic principles of multimedia learning, and that the presence of the instructor’s hand during drawing may provide an important social cue that motivates learners to make sense of the material.

In other words: making simple overhead draw-and-talk videos is a good idea.

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Fiorella, L., & Mayer, R. E. (2016). Effects of observing the instructor draw diagrams on learning from multimedia messages. Journal of Educational Psychology, 108(4), 528.

https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000065

Designing Effective Multimedia for Physics Education

Muller, D. A. (2008). Designing effective multimedia for physics education. Sydney: University of Sydney.

https://www.sydney.edu.au/science/physics/pdfs/research/super/PhD(Muller).pdf

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Derek Muller (creator of ‘Veritasium’ on YouTube), in his PhD thesis, shows that science education videos need to start with students’ misconceptions to be effective. A straightforward exposition can be worse than no instruction at all, because students do not change their mistaken views but do become more confident that they know how something works.

Effective Educational Videos: Principles and Guidelines for Maximizing Student Learning from Video Content

Brame, C. J. (2016). Effective educational videos: Principles and guidelines for maximizing student learning from video content. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 15(4), es6.

https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-03-0125

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A clear, short, and highly readable review paper that discusses research on educational video and provides practical advice on optimizing three aspects of using video in education effectively:

Managing cognitive load:
- Use signaling to highlight important information.
- Use segmenting to chunk information.
- Use weeding to eliminate extraneous information.
- Match modality by using auditory and visual channels to convey complementary information.
Maximizing student engagement:
- Keep each video brief.
- Use conversational language.
- Speak relatively quickly and with enthusiasm.
- Create and/or package videos to emphasize relevance to the course in which they are used.
Promoting active learning:
- Package video with interactive questions.
- Use interactive features that give students control.
- Use guiding questions.
- Make video part of a larger homework assignment.

Or, more concisely (quote from the conclusion):

Keep videos brief and targeted on learning goals.

Use audio and visual elements to convey appropriate parts of an explanation; consider how to make these elements complementary rather than redundant.

Use signaling to highlight important ideas or concepts.

Use a conversational, enthusiastic style to enhance engagement.

Embed videos in a context of active learning by using guiding questions, interactive elements, or associated homework assignments.

Understanding in-video dropouts and interaction peaks in online lecture videos

Kim, J., Guo, P. J., Seaton, D. T., Mitros, P., Gajos, K. Z., & Miller, R. C. (2014, March). Understanding in-video dropouts and interaction peaks inonline lecture videos. In Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning@ scale conference (pp. 31-40).

https://doi.org/10.1145/2556325.2566237

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Empirical study of drop-out rates and viewing statistics in a large number of edX course videos.

Peaks in viewing numbers – indicating rewinding and re-watching – occur around visual transitions. Students go back to a slide that’s suddenly gone and use the transitions as visual ‘bookmarks’ to re-watch or rewind to a particular explanation or section of the video.

Therefore, avoid taking away diagrams and other visual aides too soon and/or abruptly. Include clear visual anchors (e.g. title cards) at the start of sections, provide timestamps, or cut up longer videos into shorter ones.

Recording Quick Feedback Videos

As an alternative to written feedback, I make simple videos. Once you have it set up, this actually takes less time than responding with text. It’s more fun, and research suggests it’s also more effective:

Students found screencast technologies to be helpful to their learning and their interpretation of positive affect from their teachers by facilitating personal connections, creating transparency about the teacher’s evaluative process and identity, revealing the teacher’s feelings, providing visual affirmation, and establishing a conversational tone.