What are teaching and learning videos? Part I: Characteristics and didactics

Teach­ing and learn­ing videos are on every­one’s lips and in every­one’s eyes. We come across tuto­ri­als on numer­ous plat­forms in every­day life. In any case, the mov­ing image enjoys great pop­u­lar­ity. Just a quick look online reveals the vol­ume of mov­ing media con­tent. More­over, the mov­ing image cor­re­sponds to an “age-old human long­ing for dynamic images” (Schnell 2002: 21). Rea­son enough to devote one­self to the topic in the face of teach­ing or to deal with film in depth: with for­mats, pos­si­ble uses, didac­tic added value and cor­re­spond­ing tips on design. The first part of this three-part blog post pro­vides a basic def­i­n­i­tion of what con­sti­tutes teach­ing and learn­ing videos. A didac­tic clas­si­fi­ca­tion is car­ried out. A sup­port­ing guide­line for the didac­tic design of teach­ing and learn­ing videos is pre­sented.

The terms in the field of teach­ing and learn­ing videos are as numer­ous as they are dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish from one another: Prob­a­bly anal­o­gous to the albeit “asym­met­ri­cal” (Meyer 2018: 133) con­nec­tion between teach­ing and learn­ing, the terms edu­ca­tional video and instruc­tional video are used syn­ony­mously (for exam­ple: Ebner/Schön 2017). An edu­ca­tional film, on the other hand, is a doc­u­men­tary for­mat of a max­i­mum length of 15 min­utes that is real­ized with high pro­duc­tion costs (Harder n.d.: 103). This dis­tinc­tion is prob­a­bly already prob­lem­atic with regard to the now syn­ony­mous use of the terms film and video. Edu­ca­tional videos are then equated with explana­tory videos (Per­sike 2019).

It is char­ac­ter­is­tic of explana­tory videos that they have an enter­tain­ing touch. This is achieved through nar­ra­tion and comic-style visu­al­iza­tion, among other things. Explainer videos should be dif­fer­en­ti­ated from tuto­ri­als, which are shorter and there­fore less enter­tain­ing. This is because tuto­ri­als are pri­mar­ily deter­mined by a screen record­ing (screen­cast). (Harder n.d.: 103) Nev­er­the­less, a look at the range of tuto­ri­als on a plat­form such as YouTube should show that this dis­tinc­tion is hardly ever imple­mented.

Explana­tory videos are likely to be under­stood as more instruc­tive and con­crete than the record­ing of a lec­ture. After all, explana­tory videos are ded­i­cated to con­densed, small-scale aspects com­pared to a lec­ture recorded on video, for exam­ple. Con­se­quently, explana­tory videos are shorter in dura­tion. A lec­ture, on the other hand, is more expan­sive in nature, mean­ing that the run­ning time of such a record­ing can eas­ily be well over an hour. A syn­onym for the record­ing of a lec­ture in the lec­ture hall can be the term “pres­ence record­ing” (Harder n.d.: 103).

The term “dig­i­tal lec­ture” is used to describe both explana­tory videos and edu­ca­tional videos (Per­sike 2019: 4). The “live dig­i­tized lec­ture” (Per­sike 2019: 4) is a sub-item of the dig­i­tal lec­ture and refers to the record­ing of a face-to-face event.

Speak­ing of “live”: While the terms video and film may give the impres­sion of an archiv­able file, in the con­text of teach­ing and learn­ing videos, the (simul­ta­ne­ous) live stream­ing of a lec­ture could be men­tioned in addi­tion to a record­ing of a live event. The simul­ta­ne­ous stream­ing of a live event held in front of a face-to-face audi­ence and learn­ers con­nected vir­tu­ally is some­times referred to as “hybrid teach­ing”. (For the def­i­n­i­tional diver­sity of the term “hybrid teach­ing”, see Rein­mann 2021).

An e‑lecture, on the other hand, is a lec­ture pro­duced in advance: Com­pared to the record­ing of a face-to-face event, such videos are shorter and of higher qual­ity, even real­ized in the stu­dio (Harder n.d.: 103). In addi­tion, the con­tent of an e‑lecture is more detailed than that of a tra­di­tional lec­ture. This is because it is ded­i­cated to indi­vid­ual aspects. (Per­sike 2019: 5)

Demon­stra­tion videos are those films that are used in teach­ing but have no “explana­tory char­ac­ter” (Per­sike 2019: 4). Con­se­quently, even if this video mate­r­ial was pro­duced specif­i­cally for teach­ing pur­poses, it may have no nar­ra­tive text and lit­tle nar­ra­tive prepa­ra­tion. Fur­ther­more, demon­stra­tion videos can also be excerpts from other forms of mov­ing media. (Per­sike 2019: 5) In this con­text, one could there­fore speak of illus­tra­tive mate­r­ial.

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Attempt: To give the for­mats of teach­ing and learn­ing videos a lit­tle sharp­ness ...
Image by Sönke Hahn, released under CC 0 (1.0)

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Over­all, the inten­tion of what the video should achieve and the form of real­iza­tion of the video as well as pro­duc­tion val­ues are sum­ma­rized in a less dif­fer­en­ti­ated way to describe the com­plex of teach­ing and learn­ing videos (e.g. Per­sike 2019).

Over­all, on the side of a con­cern asso­ci­ated with videos, basic trends or for­mat cat­e­gories can be rec­og­nized within the com­plex of teach­ing and learn­ing videos 2 + 1: the lec­ture cap­tured on film and/or trans­mit­ted by video, cor­re­spond­ingly cap­tured lec­tures etc. as well as explana­tory videos. The addi­tive “+1” refers to demon­stra­tion videos accord­ing to Per­sike (2019: 5) — i.e. the afore­men­tioned illus­tra­tive mate­r­ial. As already men­tioned, this tends to be clas­si­fied as a means to an end.

These 2 + 1 for­mat cat­e­gories can be related to dif­fer­ent forms of video pro­duc­tion and real­iza­tion. We have already got to know some of them: screen­cast, award in the stu­dio, ani­ma­tions. A field of ten­sion emerges. Metaphor­i­cally, we could speak of two sides of the same coin:

Two sides of the same coin: A field of ten­sion between for­mats and processes (more on this in part 2 of the series)
Image by Sönke Hahn, released under CC BY 4.0

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Before these two poles, the for­mat or inten­tion side on the one hand and the pro­duc­tion side on the other, can be exam­ined more closely and the types occur­ring in this field can be defined more pre­cisely, a basic def­i­n­i­tion of teach­ing and learn­ing videos must be pro­vided.

Four characteristics of teaching and learning videos

Four char­ac­ter­is­tics can be iden­ti­fied for the over­all com­plex of “teach­ing and learn­ing videos”. How­ever, due to the ubiq­ui­tous con­ver­gence (Hick­ethier 2007: 1 and 11; Burkhard 2019: 36 ff.) of dif­fer­ent media, the char­ac­ter­is­tics can­not always be assigned exclu­sively to teach­ing and learn­ing videos:

1. Audio­vi­su­al­iza­tion (- mul­ti­me­dia, “mov­ing image”): Tar­geted con­tent is audio­vi­su­al­ized — in line with the medium of film and its reg­u­lar com­bi­na­tion of sound and visual pre­sen­ta­tions. In this con­text, one could also speak of mul­ti­me­dia. For the medium of film is to be under­stood as a com­bi­na­tion of sev­eral “basic media” (Schanze 2002: 219 f.) — sound, image, text, etc. (Whereby it must be added, again restric­tively and for the sake of com­plete­ness, that these basic media need not be the small­est unit of a work. For each image can itself also con­sist of var­i­ous signs and meta-medial facets). In view of this char­ac­ter­is­tic of the medium, it is worth tak­ing a look at the didac­ti­cally and com­mu­nica­tively insight­ful mul­ti­me­dia prin­ci­ples (Mayer 2021) and their the­o­ret­i­cal back­ground when design­ing edu­ca­tional videos. These prin­ci­ples are not exclu­sively ded­i­cated to the mov­ing image. Nev­er­the­less, these prin­ci­ples can pro­vide ori­en­ta­tion when design­ing a film. This is because an edu­ca­tional video that fol­lows the prin­ci­ples can pro­mote a multi-chan­nel uti­liza­tion of the work­ing mem­ory that is con­ducive to learn­ing. In addi­tion, the fas­ci­na­tion with and increased focus on the mov­ing image men­tioned at the begin­ning of this arti­cle is worth tak­ing up. This is because films are a trend, a famil­iar com­mu­ni­ca­tion sit­u­a­tion for learn­ers, so to speak: This thresh­old in the exchange with learn­ers can there­fore be taken “once already”. More­over, due to their dynamic nature, videos are also suit­able for demon­strat­ing and explain­ing dynamic facts (Harder n.d.: 103).
2. Poten­tially loca­tion-inde­pen­dent use: The files and videos can be viewed “from any­where” and the intended con­tent can be learned at any time. “Poten­tially” means: depend­ing on the pro­vi­sion (inter­net or intranet or pass­word-pro­tected learn­ing plat­form etc.), end devices (FullHD, pos­si­bly UHD/4k capa­ble) and inter­net access (data vol­ume, trans­mis­sion rate) of teach­ers and learn­ers.
3. Poten­tially “asyn­chro­nous” (Ebner/Schön 2017: 2) pro­vi­sion: teach­ing and learn­ing videos as files can be called up, stopped, rewound and viewed again in the event of missed events, time-sen­si­tive learn­ing orga­ni­za­tion and/or in the sense of an indi­vid­ual learn­ing pace for deep­en­ing, for review­ing (Rosen­baum 2018: n.p.). “Poten­tially” means here: This char­ac­ter­is­tic does not apply if it is exclu­sively a live trans­mis­sion.
4. Didac­ti­cally weighed up, clas­si­fied, designed & real­ized: In the sense of an edu­ca­tional con­cern, the con­cepts for any videos or the video­graphic prepa­ra­tion of an intended con­tent should fol­low didac­tic con­sid­er­a­tions (Ebner/Schön 2017: 2). In addi­tion, a video can or should be inte­grated into larger didac­tic con­texts — such as a teach­ing con­cept (Aldrian 2019: 3).

A didactic touch is indispensable

Before we can look specif­i­cally at the var­i­ous for­mats of teach­ing and learn­ing videos, we need to take a didac­tic per­spec­tive. After all, didac­tics is the study of teach­ing and learn­ing (Jank/Meyer 2020: 14). It should there­fore be able to answer fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about the use of videos in teach­ing. There­fore, it must first be noted: Both the use of instruc­tional and explana­tory videos and the con­crete design of the same should be car­ried out with didac­tic con­sid­er­a­tions in mind. Expe­ri­ence has shown that didac­tics is met with skep­ti­cism. Per­haps it sounds too much like school. A com­mu­nica­tive-media approach is there­fore an alter­na­tive: The what, an intended con­tent and the how, the nar­ra­tive style and con­crete audio­vi­sual design of said con­tent, always and in prac­tice result in an insep­a­ra­ble con­nec­tion. It is well known that good con­tent can be poorly com­mu­ni­cated. And an illus­tra­tion does not help if it shows “noth­ing”. Media within a film and within a course are never just mere tools like those of a work­bench. Rather, they are part of the con­text. And at the same time, a pos­si­ble course and the poten­tially shared space cre­ated together with stu­dents are media as a whole. We are all too famil­iar with the ten­sion between the need for com­plete­ness and sim­pli­fi­ca­tion in teach­ing plan­ning and this also applies to the plan­ning of teach­ing and learn­ing videos. The term didac­tic reduc­tion refers to the prepa­ra­tion of mate­r­ial for the learn­ing group for whom the con­tent is to be made com­pre­hen­si­ble and acces­si­ble. Abstrac­tion and par­tic­i­pa­tion (Lehner 2020: 145) are just two pos­si­ble forms of didac­tic reduc­tion. The chal­lenge always lies in select­ing teach­ing and learn­ing mate­r­ial on the one hand and thus lim­it­ing expla­na­tions to the essen­tials. On the other hand, didac­tic reduc­tion is achieved by reduc­ing a sub­ject mat­ter at the con­tent level. The tech­ni­cal com­plex­ity is main­tained, but the abstract state­ments of the reduc­tion are illus­trated by means of aids — e.g. by means of pre­sen­ta­tion, demon­stra­tion and proof strate­gies (Lehner 2020: 14). How­ever, highly abstract pre­sen­ta­tions or over-sim­pli­fi­ca­tion can run the risk of reduc­ing learn­ing suc­cess, as either “the mate­r­ial […] is sim­ply not seen as a chal­lenge” (Ebner/Schön 2017: 7). Or, if over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tions result in tech­ni­cal and fac­tual errors, this can lead to mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions by learn­ers. We will take a closer look at this chal­lenge in the third part of this blog series. With regard to the didac­ti­cally and/or com­mu­nica­tively-medi­ally moti­vated use of teach­ing and learn­ing videos, one could speak of gran­u­lar­ity. This is because adopt­ing a cor­re­spond­ing per­spec­tive is not only use­ful for a sin­gle video: on the one hand, a video should itself be designed in line with didac­tic rec­om­men­da­tions. On the other hand, it is also about the didac­tic and con­tent-related fit of the teach­ing and learn­ing videos into an over­ar­ch­ing over­all con­cept or teach­ing con­cept (Aldrian 2019: 3). A video is there­fore not used for its own sake, but ful­fills a pur­pose. An instruc­tional or explana­tory video “rarely stands alone” (Aldrian 2019: 3). So the ques­tion must also be asked: is the medium, the for­mat, suit­able for illus­trat­ing these facts? As already men­tioned, the dynamic sequence of a video is cer­tainly par­tic­u­larly suit­able for audio­vi­su­al­iz­ing processes. The mul­ti­me­dia prin­ci­ples of the Amer­i­can psy­chol­o­gist Mayer, for exam­ple, which also apply beyond the mov­ing image, can pro­vide ori­en­ta­tion for the con­crete design, the bal­anc­ing of image and text — more on the prin­ci­ples in a moment. How­ever, gran­u­lar­ity does not only mean the place­ment of the teach­ing and learn­ing video within the over­all con­text of a semes­ter course. On the media-didac­tic and media-tech­ni­cal side, it also means a descrip­tion of the video mate­r­ial. Teach­ing and learn­ing mate­ri­als can gen­er­ally be clas­si­fied in terms of size and didac­tic con­tent. Teach­ing and learn­ing videos can also have dif­fer­ent gran­u­lar­i­ties and thus dif­fer­ent didac­tic-struc­tured com­plex­i­ties. With regard to reusable learn­ing objects, which also include teach­ing and learn­ing videos, the Aus­trian soci­ol­o­gist Peter Baum­gart­ner refers to a Matryoshka-like prin­ci­ple when he con­cep­tu­al­izes five dif­fer­ent lev­els of gran­u­lar­ity for teach­ing and learn­ing mate­ri­als. The so-called media objects (assets) form the first level on the gran­u­lar­ity scale. Accord­ing to Baum­gart­ner, text, images and sound are the small­est units in terms of the afore­men­tioned lev­els. These media objects can be com­bined into “con­tent-struc­tured infor­ma­tion units” and thus reach the sec­ond level of gran­u­lar­ity. It goes on to say that “only when these infor­ma­tion units are didac­ti­cally moti­vated and con­vey or help to develop a spe­cific learn­ing objec­tive does a learn­ing object emerge from them” (Baum­gart­ner 2004: 317). This Matroschka prin­ci­ple com­prises two fur­ther stages, pro­vided that teach­ing units and courses are regarded as reusable teach­ing and learn­ing mate­ri­als: “In accor­dance with the didac­tic require­ments […] appro­pri­ately adapted lessons and courses are gen­er­ated through a spe­cific com­bi­na­tion of learn­ing objects.” (Baum­gart­ner 2004: 318) If units, lessons or courses are designed and real­ized as teach­ing and learn­ing videos, for exam­ple, they can be located at sev­eral lev­els of gran­u­lar­ity. Depend­ing on their ori­en­ta­tion, enrich­ment and seri­al­ity, they are either infor­ma­tion objects or learn­ing objects or more didac­ti­cally com­plex enti­ties: units/lessons or courses. By the way, if you are look­ing for tem­plates to build entire courses, then twillo sup­port — using course tem­plates that can be inte­grated into learn­ing man­age­ment sys­tems for inverted class­room, prob­lem-based and research-based learn­ing.

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Films in the con­text of “larger” teach­ing-learn­ing con­texts — Gran­u­lar­ity
Image by Sönke Hahn, released under CC BY 4.0

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When does a video make sense within a teach­ing and learn­ing sce­nario? Edu­ca­tional videos can be used in “dif­fer­ent learn­ing sce­nar­ios and forms of teach­ing and events” (Aldrian 2019: 5). They can be used in depth (Sailer/Figas 2015: 78; Aldrian 2019: 5), as a sup­ple­ment (Aldrian 2019: 4), to pro­vide vari­ety (Aldrian 2019: 5), for prepa­ra­tion or fol­low-up (Aldrian 2019: 5) or as a pri­mary source. Their field of appli­ca­tion ranges from face-to-face teach­ing or live-streamed events to the field of blended learn­ing (Aldrian 2019: 5 f.).

In prin­ci­ple, but espe­cially in the con­text of blended learn­ing, videos can be of a prepara­tory or fol­low-up nature or ful­fill a cor­re­spond­ing didac­tic func­tion (Aldrian 2019: 5). Espe­cially in flipped or inverted class­rooms, they can serve as a cen­tral source for learn­ing or at least as a start­ing point for what is cov­ered in the char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally sub­or­di­nate con­tact time or in the atten­dance phases (Aldrian 2019: 5). The same also applies to online courses, so-called MOOCs (Mas­sive Open Online Courses), which can often be com­pleted with­out an appoint­ment and at any time. Videos play a cen­tral role in con­vey­ing the course con­tent (Ebner/Schön 2017: 4). Inter­ac­tive ele­ments are often also used in MOOCs (Sailer/Figas 2015: 78, Aldrian 2019: 6) in order to improve learner moti­va­tion (Aldrian 2019: 6).

In con­nec­tion with the term hybrid teach­ing men­tioned at the begin­ning, which has been used many times (Rein­mann 2021), ref­er­ence should be made to the live stream­ing of a lec­ture in pres­ence, in front of a pres­ence audi­ence for a simul­ta­ne­ously vir­tu­ally con­nected audi­ence: The­o­ret­i­cally, the face-to-face event can be attended from any loca­tion thanks to video stream­ing. (Even though two “media” — pres­ence and vir­tual space — “col­lide”. The best that can be achieved for both media is a com­pro­mise. More on this in part 3 of this blog series).

The tax­on­omy of the US psy­chol­o­gist Ben­jamin Bloom can be used to deter­mine the didac­tic func­tion of a teach­ing and learn­ing video. The revi­sion of the lev­els by the US edu­ca­tional sci­en­tist David Krath­wohl can also be con­sid­ered. The tax­on­omy can be used to clas­sify or deter­mine learn­ing objec­tives, i.e. what learn­ers should ide­ally “ulti­mately” be able to do in the course of learn­ing and teach­ing videos or through their con­texts. Ben­jamin Bloom’s stages are known to be the fol­low­ing: remem­ber (recall knowl­edge), under­stand (sum­ma­rize, cat­e­go­rize), apply (cal­cu­late, per­form), ana­lyze (dif­fer­en­ti­ate, com­pare), evaluate/reflect (crit­i­cally and rea­son­ably exam­ine), generate/create (con­ceive, real­ize).

The poten­tials (and emerg­ing hur­dles) of teach­ing and learn­ing videos men­tioned here will be explored in greater depth in the next parts of our blog post. First, how­ever, we would like to focus on an ori­en­ta­tion fac­tor in the design of an edu­ca­tional video that has already been men­tioned sev­eral times — the mul­ti­me­dia prin­ci­ples:

Orientation for didactic design (including teaching and learning videos) — Multimedia principles

The mul­ti­me­dia prin­ci­ples offer assis­tance in weigh­ing up the use and com­bi­na­tion of media — mul­ti­me­dia — and in design­ing it in con­crete terms. In view of the mul­ti­me­dia nature of the mov­ing image, they can also be con­sulted in the field of edu­ca­tional videos. These prin­ci­ples orig­i­nate from the pen of the Amer­i­can psy­chol­o­gist Richard E. Mayer, in par­tic­u­lar his work on mul­ti­me­dia learn­ing, which has been pub­lished in sev­eral edi­tions since 2001. May­er’s prin­ci­ples are more than just the­o­ries; they are based on empir­i­cal find­ings.

May­er’s con­sid­er­a­tions are not only used in the con­text of didac­tics, but also fun­da­men­tally in com­mu­ni­ca­tion, even in the field of adver­tis­ing. The num­ber of mul­ti­me­dia prin­ci­ples varies greatly — depend­ing on the edi­tion of May­er’s work: Mayer has added fur­ther prin­ci­ples to the cat­a­log in recent years. We present an abridged ver­sion here.

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Weigh­ing up design didac­ti­cally — with the help of mul­ti­me­dia prin­ci­ples
Image by Sönke Hahn, released under CC BY 4.0

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A cognitive learning model

May­er’s con­cept of mul­ti­me­dia prin­ci­ples is based on a cog­ni­tive learn­ing model for human infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing (Mayer 2021: 40 f.) and a cor­re­spond­ing idea of the processes in the brain. Work­ing mem­ory plays a cen­tral role in this. Work­ing mem­ory is essen­tially the human deci­sion-maker asso­ci­ated with con­scious­ness (Held/Scheiter 2019: 70 f.). It is the con­scious inter­face between per­cep­tion and long-term mem­ory (Meyer 2020: 183). Work­ing mem­ory is the start­ing point for con­scious action (Jank/Meyer 2020: 183). Work­ing mem­ory does not only draw on what is stored in long-term mem­ory. Rather, it can also be the start­ing point for stor­ing input in the long term or trans­fer­ring it to long-term mem­ory, which should cer­tainly be a con­cern of teach­ing. Such knowl­edge can in turn be used in work­ing mem­ory and so on. In all these processes, work­ing mem­ory forms, cre­ates or uses sim­pli­fied men­tal images (Mayer 2021: 40 ff.). This is because work­ing mem­ory only has a lim­ited amount of resources — in terms of the amount of data and the reten­tion time of this data (Zoelch/Berner/Thomas 2019: 27 ff., Mayer 2021: 41).

In this model of learn­ing, on which May­er’s work is based, it is assumed that sen­sory impres­sions pass through the sen­sory mem­ory fol­low­ing our sen­sory organs in order to enter work­ing mem­ory (Mayer 2021: 40 f.). The focus of the model is pri­mar­ily on acoustic and visual infor­ma­tion. This is because, in this model, they each enter work­ing mem­ory via a sep­a­rate chan­nel (Mayer 2021: 40). In this machine-like metaphor, the work­ing mem­ory holds resources for the pro­cess­ing of the two chan­nels and the infor­ma­tion brought to it. The “incom­ing” data sets are related to each other: The word cat very prob­a­bly gives rise to the image of a cat. When we see a cat, we hear the word cat inter­nally. (Mayer 2021: 41) This means that if only one chan­nel is used when con­vey­ing new infor­ma­tion to be learned, the resources of the other remain unused. Or if acoustic and visual infor­ma­tion are very dif­fer­ent, the work­ing mem­ory has a lot to do or is approach­ing over­load. How­ever, if both chan­nels are used to capac­ity, “more” can poten­tially “hap­pen” in the work­ing mem­ory. And this brings us specif­i­cally to the mul­ti­me­dia prin­ci­ples:

The principles

• Mul­ti­me­dia prin­ci­ple: Peo­ple learn bet­ter from a com­bi­na­tion of images and words than from words or text. This is because the com­bi­na­tion can pro­mote links in the work­ing mem­ory instead of just form­ing one-sided ideas. (Mayer 2021: 117)
• Coher­ence prin­ci­ple: Dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments with­out didac­tic added value should be avoided. Oth­er­wise, resources on the part of learn­ers are at risk of being diverted away from the actual teach­ing per­spec­tive. (Mayer 2021: 143)
  This also refers to May­er’s image prin­ci­ple: “Sim­ply” dis­play­ing a sta­tic photo of a per­son to be heard ver­bally, i.e. the lec­turer, next to the slides can be dis­tract­ing. The sta­tic image with­out ges­tures and facial expres­sions looks bizarre. This threat­ens to make learn­ing more dif­fi­cult. (Mayer 2021: 331)
  Cau­tion: It should not be inferred from this prin­ci­ple that it does not mat­ter how some­thing “looks”. A uni­form design brings con­sis­tency and pro­vides a com­mon thread — even in the tran­si­tion from the video to other course mate­ri­als. Aes­thet­ics can also be seen as added value. Aes­thet­ics can lend the work more cred­i­bil­ity (Yablon­ski 2020: 59) and help any mate­r­ial to be retained in the long term.
• Sig­nal prin­ci­ple: High­light­ing or empha­siz­ing what is shown ver­bally or visu­ally can pro­mote bet­ter learn­ing. This pro­vides ori­en­ta­tion, makes con­nec­tions clearer and facil­i­tates the cre­ation of any men­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tions. (Mayer 2021: 166)
• Redun­dancy prin­ci­ple: The simul­ta­ne­ous occur­rence of writ­ten and spo­ken text (≈ read­ing aloud a vis­i­ble or read­able text) can impair learn­ing. This is because iden­ti­cal infor­ma­tion over­laps and has to be rec­on­ciled with dif­fi­culty. (Mayer 2021: 186)
• Con­ti­gu­ity prin­ci­ple (Mayer 2021: 207): Ele­ments that belong together — e.g. text and graph­ics — should be posi­tioned next to each other instead of at a great dis­tance from each other. In the case of printed works, graph­ics should there­fore not dis­ap­pear in the appen­dix. This can lead to a loss of ori­en­ta­tion.
• Seg­men­ta­tion prin­ci­ple (Mayer 2021: 247): Seg­men­ta­tion into smaller sub-units, which is grad­u­ally vis­i­ble or empha­sized, can pro­mote the pro­cess­ing of what is shown and the struc­tur­ing of the input — as opposed to a com­pletely unin­ter­rupted flow.
  A bal­ance must be struck here: between strong and in turn dis­rup­tive breaks and a flow that also cre­ates con­nec­tions.
  Seg­men­ta­tion may be rem­i­nis­cent of so-called chunk­ing. Chunk­ing refers to the pro­cess­ing of small units, par­tic­u­larly by work­ing mem­ory, or the con­sol­i­da­tion of infor­ma­tion into cor­re­spond­ing units (Zoelch/Berner/Thomas 2019: 27 f.). How­ever, this process can be facil­i­tated by the pro­cess­ing of infor­ma­tion. In this regard, ref­er­ence can be made to a field that expe­ri­ence has shown to be under­es­ti­mated, the field of typog­ra­phy: sub­di­vid­ing as the “group­ing” (Zoelch/Berner/Thomas 2019: 28) of a tele­phone num­ber, for exam­ple, which is related to chunk­ing, can help to make the num­ber eas­ier to remem­ber or at least eas­ier to type.
• Prepa­ra­tion prin­ci­ple: Basic names and terms should be known to learn­ers in advance of their “meet­ing”. This is because deal­ing with “involved” terms while explain­ing com­plex con­texts makes under­stand­ing more dif­fi­cult. (Mayer 2021: 265)
  At this point, we also touch on a con­cept that can or even should be dra­matur­gi­cally reflected in the struc­ture of a video as a teaser or intro­duc­tion: All the peo­ple or fac­tors “play­ing a part” should be intro­duced before their rela­tion­ship to each other is explored in greater depth.
• Modal­ity prin­ci­ple: If graph­ics or ani­ma­tions are to be explained, ver­bal infor­ma­tion is more suit­able than writ­ten text. In this case, there is no need to switch back and forth between image and text. Learn­ers can focus more strongly. (Mayer 2021: 281)
• Per­son­al­iza­tion prin­ci­ple (Mayer 2021: 305): This refers to the fact that a col­lo­quial or tar­get group-spe­cific style in teach­ing can facil­i­tate learn­ing. A per­sonal approach can also be help­ful — not only styl­is­ti­cally, but also in the form of a teacher who appears in per­son or an avatar. Accord­ing to Mayer (2021: 305), the human com­po­nent goes so far that a machine voice is more likely to be rejected than a human-look­ing voice.
  This prin­ci­ple can be linked to May­er’s embod­i­ment prin­ci­ple (Mayer 2021: 341), which states that a lec­turer should not just stand next to the image. Rather, they should inter­act with the image (ges­tu­rally) so that a con­nec­tion to the facts (≈ sig­nal prin­ci­ple) and ulti­mately to the learn­ers is encour­aged.
• Immer­sion prin­ci­ple: Immer­sive media can pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive insight into any given sub­ject mat­ter. Oth­er­wise, a cer­tain dis­tance, as a 2D rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a 3D fact, can cre­ate added value through abstrac­tion. It is there­fore impor­tant to weigh things up. (Mayer 2021: 357)
  To clas­sify: Immer­sion is under­stood by Mayer as an illu­sory, pho­to­re­al­is­tic, three-dimen­sional sim­u­la­tion, as vir­tual real­ity — as opposed to immer­sion in any kind of real to abstract space, work, etc. ≈ immer­sion in the world of a novel (Hahn 2018).
• Activ­ity prin­ci­ple: Guided, even prompt­ing, imme­di­ate exer­cises and/or tasks that may take place after each sec­tion (≈ seg­ment) can rein­force what has been learned. (Mayer 2021: 370) In this con­text, so-called h5P videos and the inter­ac­tion they enable should develop poten­tial in the field of teach­ing and learn­ing videos.

Multimedia principles and cognitive learning model — Notes

Typ­i­cal of mod­els and their sim­pli­fy­ing poten­tials: The cog­ni­tive in the cog­ni­tive learn­ing model may sug­gest that this is about purely objec­tive think­ing ver­sus the emo­tion­al­ity of the uncon­scious. Of course, the dis­tinc­tion between two sys­tems — an explicit, con­scious, ratio­nal one and an implicit, uncon­scious and emo­tional one — within our brain is of a the­o­ret­i­cal nature (Kah­ne­man 2012: 28 f.). In prac­tice, work­ing mem­ory is also likely to be more or less emo­tion­ally influ­enced — accord­ing to Scheier and Held (2019) in a graphic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the two sys­tems. This is prob­a­bly also why May­er’s state­ments reg­u­larly go beyond the fac­tual: for exam­ple, with regard to a bond between the audi­ence and the teacher that pro­motes learn­ing, includ­ing an emo­tional bond.

May­er’s model may then cre­ate the impres­sion of a cer­tain direc­tion­al­ity. At first glance, it may con­jure up analo­gies to a fun­nel prin­ci­ple: As if some­thing could be instilled in peo­ple. For this rea­son, ref­er­ence should be made here to con­struc­tivism. This “epis­te­mol­ogy” (Meyer 2021: 286 f.) pos­tu­lates a quasi-indi­vid­ual, con­di­tion­ally con­scious con­struc­tion of an equally indi­vid­ual view of the world. Accord­ingly, learn­ing is also based on a foun­da­tion of sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ences, val­ues, beliefs, ori­en­ta­tions and pat­terns. As a result, we must under­stand multi-chan­nel uti­liza­tion pri­mar­ily as poten­tial. Guar­an­tees of suc­cess in terms of a teach­ing per­son can never be given even for those mea­sures that fully com­ply with the prin­ci­ples. Per­sonal char­ac­ter­is­tics and/or pref­er­ences of learn­ers always play a role. In this respect, as a con­den­sa­tion of the words of the Ger­man soci­ol­o­gist Niklas Luh­mann (1997: 212): Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is improb­a­ble. And thus also teach­ing in the sense of a 1:1 trans­fer. This should not be dis­cour­ag­ing, but shows how impor­tant it is to have a well-founded con­cept and design for teach­ing and learn­ing videos and to weigh up their use. The con­struc­tivist view also shows that it is impor­tant to antic­i­pate the tar­get group of any teach­ing and learn­ing videos. The rel­e­vance of mul­ti­me­dia prin­ci­ples should there­fore lie in bet­ter address­ing the “work­ing mem­ory” bot­tle­neck with regard to teach­ing and learn­ing.

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Bot­tle­neck work­ing mem­ory: If not expand­able, then make the best pos­si­ble use of it.
Image by Sönke Hahn based on Sarah Brock­mann, released under CC 0 (1.0)

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Conclusion on the first approach to the field of teaching and learning videos

We have cul­ti­vated the field. Because we have made a basic def­i­n­i­tion of what char­ac­ter­izes edu­ca­tional videos: Teach­ing and learn­ing videos are audio-visu­al­iza­tions that can be accessed inde­pen­dently of time and place, if nec­es­sary, and are didac­ti­cally pre­pared and cat­e­go­rized. We have briefly named for­mat cat­e­gories for teach­ing and learn­ing videos: Lec­ture or pre­sen­ta­tion on video (live, as a record­ing), explana­tory videos and demon­stra­tion videos. We have explic­itly pointed out the impor­tance of didac­tic and com­mu­nica­tive clas­si­fi­ca­tion. This has revealed ini­tial hur­dles, but also poten­tial: Teach­ing and learn­ing videos are time-con­sum­ing to plan and imple­ment. How­ever, videos are also in vogue, they are likely to meet a need of learn­ers and have the poten­tial to illus­trate facts in a dynamic and catchy way.

In the next part of this blog post, we will expand on these impres­sions: We will define for­mats in more detail and con­trast these with processes or tech­niques of real­iza­tion. The next post will be pub­lished on April 22, 2022 — and can be accessed here.

You are also wel­come to access the col­lec­tion directly on twillo to go into medias res — includ­ing a hand­out with back­ground infor­ma­tion and a tem­plate.

To con­tinue read­ing — here are the next parts of our series on teach­ing and learn­ing videos:

• Part II: For­mats and fields of edu­ca­tional videos
• Part III: Poten­tial and crit­i­cism

About the authors

Franziska Bock, M. A. and Dr. Sönke Hahn are research asso­ciates of the project “OER-Por­tal Nieder­sach­sen”: twillo — Lehre teilen. Bock is active in the field of uni­ver­sity didac­tics and deals with ques­tions of writ­ing didac­tics and the con­cep­tion of reusable teach­ing and learn­ing mate­ri­als. Hahn is an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary sci­en­tist, film­maker with inter­na­tional per­for­mances and mul­ti­ple award-win­ning designer. As part of the Emden/Leer Uni­ver­sity of Applied Sci­ences, Bock and Hahn see it as their mis­sion to go beyond good con­tent to advance teach­ing as such.

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This arti­cle by Franziska Bock and Sönke Hahn is licensed under CC BY 4.0 unless oth­er­wise stated in indi­vid­ual con­tent.

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