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

Cognitive Load

Long-term memory has virally unlimited capacity.

Working memory has limited capacity.

Information must pass through working memory to be stored in long-term memory. This is done by processing the information.

Intrinsic Load (maximise to a level)

Determined by the number of connections within the subject. How often does old info help the understanding of new data.

Low load might be remembering names.

High load might be understanding the underlying process.

Germane Load (maximise)

This is amount of processing that the brain must do to understand the process.

This may involve analysis and comparison, and understanding each step.

Extraneous Load (minimise)

The amount of useless processing that does not help the student learn.

Often shown as: confusing, too much information

Element to consider	Recommendation	Rationale	Examples
Cognitive load	Use signaling to highlight important information.	Can reduce extraneous load.	Key words on screen highlighting important elements
		Can enhance germane load.	Changes in color or contrast to emphasize organization of information
			Changes in color or contrast to emphasize relationships within information
			Brief out-of-video text explaining purpose and context for video (e.g., learning objective for video)
	Use segmenting to chunk information.	Manages intrinsic load.	Short videos (6 minutes or less)
		Can enhance germane load.	Chapters or click-forward questions within videos
	Use weeding to eliminate extraneous information.	Reduces extraneous load.	Eliminating music
			Eliminating complex backgrounds
	Match modality by using auditory and visual channels to convey complementary information.	Can enhance germane load.	Khan Academy–style tutorial videos that illustrate and explain phenomena
			Narrated animations
Student engagement	Keep each video brief.	Increases percentage of each video that students watch; may increase total watch time.	Multiple videos for a lesson, each ≤ 6 minutes
		May decrease mind wandering.
	Use conversational language.	Creates a sense of social partnership between student and instructor, prompting the student to try harder to make sense of the lesson.	Placing the student in the lesson by use of “your” rather than “the” during explanations
			Use of “I” to indicate the narrator’s perspective
	Speak relatively quickly and with enthusiasm.	Increases percentage of each video that students watch.	Speaking rates in the 185–254 words per minute range
		May increase sense of social partnership between student and instructor.	Expressions of instructor excitement, such as “I love the next part; the way the feed-forward mechanism works is so elegant,” or “Consider how the cell solves this tricky problem of needing to regulate three genes in sequence; it’s really cool.”
	Create and/or package videos to emphasize relevance to the course in which they are used.	Increases percentage of each video that students watch.	Videos created for the class in which they are going to be used, with instructor narration explaining links to preceding material
		May increase germane cognitive load by helping students recognize connections.	Explanatory text to situate video in course
Active learning	Consider these strategies for promoting active learning:
	Packaging video with interactive questions.	May increase germane cognitive load, improve memory via the testing effect, and improve student self-assessment.	Integrate questions into videos with HapYak or Zaption, as described by Obodo and Baskauf (2015)
			Follow short videos with interactive questions within an LMS, as done by Keithly and colleagues (2015), or within Google Forms, as done by Caudel and colleagues (2015)
	Use interactive features that give students control.	Increases student ownership and may increase germane cognitive load.	Create “chapters” within a video using HapYak or YouTube Annotate
	Use guiding questions.	May increase germane cognitive load, reduce extraneous cognitive load, and improve student self-assessment.	Senchina (2011) provides guiding questions for videos designed to introduce physiology students to professional ethics related to experimenter–subject interactions, such as the following: “Observe the subject’s behavior and responsiveness during the dehydration period. What changes as the subject becomes dehydrated? What problems does he have? Observe the experimenters’ behavior and responsiveness as dehydration progresses. What do they do differently? Why?”
	Make video part of a larger homework assignment.	May increase student motivation, germane cognitive load, and student self-assessment.	Package videos with a series of questions or problems that ask students to apply the concepts from the videos. iBiology Education videos (e.g., What Can You Learn with a Light Microscope?) provide one example (iBiology, 2016)

Highlighting key words helps.

Music, complex backgrounds, or extra features within an animation require the learner to judge whether he or she should be paying attention to them, which increases extraneous load and can reduce learning.

Showing a person talking, animations, enhances germanic load and can improve learning.

Student Engagement

Factors:

Video length (shorter seems better)

Conversational style is better

Video length vs Engagement (data from 2012)

< 6 min ~100%

9 - 12 min ~50%

12 - 40 min ~20%

Active Learning

While learning students should challenge their current understanding for weaknesses.
Videos make people feel like they have learned something even when they might not have.
Active learning is the process of challenging a students understanding.

Packaging videos with active questions

Questions were asked at 5 min intervals. Students then performed significantly better on the following tests, more notes were taken, and test anxiety was reduced. This was also improved by students finding the whole lecture easier.

Interactive features that give students control

The ability for students to jump back and forth through a video found positive affects.

Adding chapters also had a positive affect.

Guiding questions also worked.