What are teaching and learning videos? Part III: Potential & criticism

Record­ing and stream­ing a lec­ture, longer or shorter explana­tory videos, illus­tra­tive mate­r­ial as a demon­stra­tion video, all enriched with ani­ma­tions, screen­casts etc. — the cat­e­gory of teach­ing and learn­ing videos is diverse. We have already seen this in Part 1 and espe­cially Part 2. Now we want to con­clude with an overview of the oppor­tu­ni­ties offered by teach­ing and learn­ing videos. But where there is light, there is also shadow: So, in this final part of this series, we have to deal with prob­lems and chal­lenges in the use of teach­ing and learn­ing videos and how to deal with them.

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The first page in the field of teach­ing and learn­ing videos in focus
Image by Sönke Hahn based on Sarah Brock­mann, released under CC BY 4.0

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In the pre­vi­ous parts of this blog series, we pro­vided a basic def­i­n­i­tion of teach­ing and learn­ing videos and iden­ti­fied four char­ac­ter­is­tics: Teach­ing and learn­ing videos are an audio-visu­al­iza­tion that can be accessed inde­pen­dently of time and place, if nec­es­sary, and that can be didac­ti­cally pre­pared and clas­si­fied. This was fol­lowed by a didac­tic clas­si­fi­ca­tion, out­lin­ing how and in which sce­nar­ios videos can be used. We looked at the mul­ti­me­dia prin­ci­ples that can also be used to opti­mize learn­ing and teach­ing via mov­ing images. In the sec­ond part, we looked at the 2 + 1 cat­e­gory in the field of edu­ca­tional videos — lec­tures on video (live, recorded), explana­tory videos and demon­stra­tion videos. And these cat­e­gories were placed in rela­tion to the medium of film itself and the tech­niques used, the forms of pro­duc­tion. Now we want to dis­cuss the poten­tial, but also the weak­nesses of the use of videos from a com­mu­nica­tive-didac­tic point of view.

Didactic-communicative potential of educational videos

For the sake of clar­ity, we dif­fer­en­ti­ate between three poten­tials: basic poten­tials, poten­tials in the over­all didac­tic mix and poten­tials from a pro­duc­tion per­spec­tive. Basic poten­tials result from the nature of the medium, poten­tials in the over­all mix relate the mov­ing image to other teach­ing and learn­ing mea­sures; “pro­duc­tion per­spec­tive” refers to prac­ti­cal poten­tials in the real­iza­tion of teach­ing and learn­ing videos.

Basic potentials

• “Work­ing mem­ory-com­pli­ant” com­mu­ni­ca­tion: Address­ing the audi­ence in a mul­ti­me­dia way, i.e. using visual and acoustic chan­nels, can increase the chance of com­mu­ni­cat­ing the intended con­tent — with­out over­load­ing or over­load­ing the work­ing mem­ory. See mul­ti­me­dia prin­ci­ples and their back­ground in the first arti­cle. The per­son pro­duc­ing the con­tent must weigh up the options and find a good bal­ance with regard to mea­sures that pro­mote learn­ing: Teach­ing and learn­ing videos are con­ducive to learn­ing if spo­ken state­ments or expla­na­tions are pre­sented as syn­chro­nously as pos­si­ble with the visu­al­iza­tions (≈ tem­po­ral con­ti­nu­ity prin­ci­ple). On the one hand, sound and image should not be too far apart (≈ prin­ci­ple of coher­ence). Oth­er­wise, learn­ers may lose their ori­en­ta­tion. On the other hand, for exam­ple, it should not be read out loud, i.e. a 1:1 pro­nun­ci­a­tion of read­able, i.e. shown texts (≈ redun­dancy prin­ci­ple). Such a pro­ce­dure can lead to a load that is dif­fi­cult to syn­chro­nize with regard to visual and acoustic resources or our work­ing mem­ory.
• Pro­mot­ing indi­vid­ual learn­ing, inde­pen­dent of time and place: Today’s videos, which are mostly dig­i­tal and placed on the Inter­net, intranet, etc., can be accessed by learn­ers at any time or place — just like other dig­i­tally pro­vided materials/media. This means that a video, the con­tent doc­u­mented there, can be viewed sev­eral times etc. The sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent for live broad­casts, which do not pro­vide for record­ing. In the case of live broad­casts, how­ever, the non-repeat­able event char­ac­ter could be empha­sized in order to moti­vate view­ers to tune in.
• Vivid com­mu­ni­ca­tion of con­texts, even spaces: Edu­ca­tional and explana­tory videos have the poten­tial to make facts clear and to demon­strate con­texts. Although this poten­tial is pri­mar­ily attrib­uted to 3D ani­ma­tions and/or nat­u­ral­is­tic design approaches (Zan­der et. al. 2018: 10), we want to gen­er­al­ize: Anal­o­gous to the sequen­tial nature of the medium of film, sequences or processes are par­tic­u­larly suit­able as con­tent for videos or can be depicted in short videos (Harder n. d. 102) — as a fusion of con­tent and form. The mov­ing image also holds poten­tial due to our famil­iar­ity with it, inso­far as we can cre­ate spaces from indi­vid­ual images and shots in our mind’s eye. From an early age, we have learned to uncon­sciously trans­late the infor­ma­tion pre­sented by pans and cuts into a spa­tial con­cept. Even with­out stereo­scopic 3D and with­out 360° films, we vir­tu­ally immerse our­selves in the result­ing space (Hahn 2018) and thus in any intended teach­ing con­tent. Specif­i­cally, we can list some means that could be used in the design of teach­ing and learn­ing videos. Lin­guis­tic or visual high­lights can be used to uti­lize the space in the screen. Ori­en­ta­tion is pro­vided by so-called deic­tic cues, which use the spo­ken text to cre­ate a con­crete ref­er­ence to the images — sim­i­lar to the lec­ture hall, when ref­er­ence is made to the con­tent of a slide: “Here below you see now”, “right next to it” or “this sym­bol shows”. Alter­na­tively, visual high­lights such as color or typog­ra­phy, arrows, cir­cles or ani­ma­tion effects can also be used to draw atten­tion to the con­tent(sig­nal­ing prin­ci­ple).
• Manip­u­late time and make it vis­i­ble: In addi­tion, con­tent that cap­tures a tem­po­ral dimen­sion can also be depicted. Let’s think of chem­i­cal reac­tions that take a long time or occur quickly to the naked eye. Here, too, it is pos­si­ble to depict processes or states by means of slow or fast motion — slow motion and fast motion.
• Vir­tual sub­sti­tu­tion of the human medium? We have already seen in the first part that a human or human-like pres­ence can be help­ful: For bond­ing teach­ers and learn­ers with each other and with the con­tent. Can do no more, no less — espe­cially with regard to con­struc­tivist per­spec­tives. In addi­tion, beyond the direct pro­mo­tion of learn­ing, an indi­rectly learn­ing-pro­mot­ing strength­en­ing of a rela­tion­ship of trust between teach­ers and learn­ers can cer­tainly be pro­moted by a bal­anced (visual) appear­ance of the lec­turer. Imag­ine this: Sit­ting in the lec­ture hall with­out see­ing the per­son giv­ing the lec­ture is likely to seem very alien­at­ing (and could even pass as a cri­sis exper­i­ment). In prac­tice, a live trans­mis­sion from one sem­i­nar room to a sec­ond is a pos­si­ble solu­tion if space is lim­ited, although this can­not com­pletely do with­out the pro­tag­o­nist either. How­ever, the sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent in explana­tory or demon­stra­tion videos; here, the visual pres­ence of a pre­sen­ter is not nec­es­sar­ily required. This aspect should also be exam­ined from a com­mu­nica­tive-didac­tic design per­spec­tive. The cen­tral ques­tion here is: “Does the visual pres­ence of the per­son speak­ing have a ben­e­fi­cial effect on the learn­ing process?” To date, there are no clear empir­i­cal find­ings on the extent to which the pres­ence of the speaker in teach­ing and learn­ing videos has an impact on learn­ing. Schmidt-Borcherd­ing and Dren­del (2021) ask about the sig­nif­i­cance of this pres­ence and address the com­pe­ti­tion between the ele­ments used and speaker images for the atten­tion of learn­ers. The per­son speak­ing receives 30% of the visual atten­tion. Their effect in the image must be assessed as ambiva­lent: “On the one hand, the speak­er’s pres­ence attracts atten­tion and can thus dis­tract from the learn­ing object. On the other hand, a vis­i­ble speaker can draw atten­tion back to spe­cific aspects of the sub­ject mat­ter.” (Schmidt-Borcherd­ing/­Dren­del 2021: 71). The mere visu­al­iza­tion of a speak­ing per­son is there­fore less deci­sive than the ques­tion of how and when they actu­ally appear in the video. The over­all coher­ence of the mul­ti­modal ele­ments used (image, sound, image of the speaker) is there­fore impor­tant (Schmidt-Borcherd­ing/­Dren­del 2021: 71), which touches on a com­mu­nica­tive-didac­tic prob­lem: The deci­sion as to whether and how a visu­al­iza­tion of the speaker is real­ized can­not there­fore be answered in a gen­eral way here. At this point, the use of a sto­ry­board for plan­ning a teach­ing and learn­ing video is rec­om­mended in any case in order to weigh up and record such deci­sions. Here is an invi­ta­tion to browse through the col­lec­tion of teach­ing and learn­ing videos. Speak­ing of sub­sti­tu­tion: At this point, we should not fall for the mis­con­cep­tion that a vir­tual get-together is on a par with face-to-face con­tact. Cer­tainly, in the wake of the pan­demic, it can be seen as a sub­sti­tute to com­pen­sate for not being able to meet in per­son. Nev­er­the­less, the excerpt-like char­ac­ter of a video leads to a dif­fer­ent, less com­pre­hen­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tion (body lan­guage etc.) in rela­tion to a face-to-face meet­ing.

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Link­ing learn­ing objec­tive tax­on­omy and teach­ing and learn­ing videos
Image by Franziska Bock based on Sarah Brock­mann, released under CC BY 4.0

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Excursus — teaching and learning video + learning objective taxonomy

When we talk about didac­tic poten­tial, the tax­on­omy level model comes in handy at this point. The tax­on­omy of learn­ing objec­tives has already been touched on in the first part of this blog post. The aim here is to relate the six classes of cog­ni­tive learn­ing objec­tives to the medium of teach­ing and learn­ing videos. The use of teach­ing and learn­ing videos can also be very diverse from a didac­tic point of view. How­ever, diver­sity should not nec­es­sar­ily be taken to mean arbi­trari­ness. The use of teach­ing and learn­ing videos should never be an end in itself. Rather, they should be used as a means and selected for good rea­son as part of the con­cep­tual cur­ricu­lum plan­ning. At best, teach­ing and learn­ing objec­tives are the start­ing point. Based on the spe­cific learn­ing objec­tive linked to the ques­tion of what stu­dents should actu­ally do (method­olog­i­cally), the teach­ing and learn­ing video can be linked to the dif­fer­ent learn­ing objec­tive lev­els. Of course, this can only be done here in a very gen­eral and exem­plary way.

1. Remem­ber knowl­edge / retrieve knowl­edge — Regard­less of whether the video mate­r­ial is self-pro­duced or pro­duced by a third party, a task is implied in both cases; the teach­ing and learn­ing video has the char­ac­ter of an invi­ta­tion to receive what is pre­sented. At the first stage, an edu­ca­tional video can be linked to the inten­tion of ini­tially receiv­ing con­tent in order to acquire the infor­ma­tion it con­tains as knowl­edge. This often involves knowl­edge of indi­vid­ual facts, sequences or ter­mi­nol­ogy in the mode of expla­na­tion. These aims are con­sti­tu­tive for explana­tory videos, but also for instruc­tional record­ings. “The under­ly­ing didac­tic approach is based on the pro­vi­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of infor­ma­tion.” (Sei­del 2018: 48) How­ever, pure recep­tion does not always lead to suc­cess. Occa­sion­ally, a didac­tic or method­olog­i­cal frame­work is required that goes beyond mere recep­tion. For exam­ple, addi­tional ele­ments such as knowl­edge queries or con­trol tasks can be included. Whether in advance, dur­ing the course of the video or after­wards, ques­tions or tasks can strengthen the focus. With the help of some appli­ca­tions, depend­ing on the plat­form for pub­lish­ing a video, an explana­tory video can be divided into mean­ing­ful sec­tions. For exam­ple, a task could be added at the end of a video in addi­tion to the fin­ished file — H5P. The bound­ary between the first and sec­ond stage is fluid.
2. Under­stand­ing: For the cog­ni­tive learn­ing level of under­stand­ing, it is advis­able to allow the infor­ma­tion pre­sented in the teach­ing or learn­ing video to be repro­duced beyond view­ing. Stu­dents should reca­pit­u­late the cen­tral state­ments in their own words or write a sum­mary. As a pos­si­ble sce­nario, a video can also act as a silent stim­u­lus for intro­duc­ing a topic in order to acti­vate any prior knowl­edge. It can already be seen here that the learn­ing require­ments required here refer to the first level (remembering/knowledge) and take the con­sid­er­a­tions there with them — as already men­tioned, the lev­els are not free of over­laps.
3. Apply: The Apply learn­ing objec­tive level can also be designed dif­fer­ently in con­junc­tion with teach­ing and learn­ing videos. For exam­ple, a case can be used as demon­stra­tion mate­r­ial and func­tion as a con­crete self-learn­ing activ­ity. It is also pos­si­ble for the Apply phase to be pre­ceded by a video, which would, how­ever, be described as an instruc­tion: video instruc­tions, also referred to here as tuto­ri­als, pro­vide instruc­tions on how actions and processes are to be car­ried out (Sei­del 2018: 47).
4. Ana­lyze: How­ever, teach­ing and learn­ing videos can also be used as an object of analy­sis and, in the form of a demon­stra­tion video for exam­ple, repro­duce “nat­ural” sit­u­a­tions or action sit­u­a­tions that stu­dents can approach with their analy­sis cat­e­gories: Per­haps a con­flict is shown, on the basis of which esca­la­tion stages are to be clar­i­fied or pos­si­bil­i­ties for inter­ven­tion can be con­sid­ered. On the other hand, video­taped actions can serve as inter­pre­ta­tion mate­r­ial to pro­mote a cor­re­spond­ing abil­ity. This can or should always be done with media lit­er­acy in mind: Like all media, film can only ever depict an excerpt.
5. Gen­er­ate: We have already addressed the learn­ing objec­tive of gen­er­at­ing sev­eral times with exam­ples of film­ing or pro­duc­ing your own videos and with the “learn­ing through teach­ing” approach. Stu­dents are given the task of prepar­ing a learn­ing object in the for­mat of a video and mak­ing it avail­able as infor­ma­tion mate­r­ial for the learn­ing group: Video glos­sary, explana­tory video, on a term, pre­sen­ta­tion of a con­cept or model or of the­o­rists, etc. This approach allows stu­dents to take a look at the media char­ac­ter­is­tics of the mov­ing image and strength­ens their skills in com­mu­ni­cat­ing facts to oth­ers. In this regard, how­ever, teach­ers must pro­vide sup­port mea­sures for video pro­duc­tion and take into account the resources avail­able to stu­dents.
6. Assess: Video resources can also be used as an object of reflec­tion. First of all, the self-pro­duced video could be reflected upon — see above. Over­all, con­tri­bu­tions from var­i­ous areas can be used to ana­lyze, reflect on and eval­u­ate the recorded cul­tural forms of expres­sion: What does a his­tory film say about the world­view dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of the film and the antic­i­pated world­view of the tar­get audi­ence? What did peo­ple know about the his­tory cov­ered? Videos are — sim­i­lar to ana­lyz­ing — demon­stra­tion mate­r­ial. (As I said, there is never any over­lap between teach­ing and edu­ca­tional video types.) Demon­stra­tion videos can pro­vide key impulses for the learn­ing process — for dis­cus­sions and in-depth debates; not least, they pro­mote mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives and, depend­ing on the focus, crit­i­cal think­ing.
   

These are just a few exam­ples to show that spe­cific learn­ing lev­els can be antic­i­pated with and in the design of teach­ing and learn­ing videos, depend­ing on the didac­tic func­tion and inten­tion. How­ever, a rigid trans­fer is not advis­able. Rather, the aim here is to pro­vide a rough ori­en­ta­tion for their use.

Potential in the overall didactic mix

• Sup­ple­ment and deepen: Due to time con­straints dur­ing the con­tact phases, for exam­ple, top­ics that have only been touched on can be made avail­able to learn­ers in an indi­vid­u­ally acces­si­ble video, for exam­ple as part of a learn­ing plat­form, to sup­ple­ment and deepen any con­tent. (Sailer/Figas 2015: 78; Aldrian 2019: 4 f.)
• Prepara­tory and fol­low-up sources, sum­ma­riz­ing func­tion: Espe­cially in the con­text of flipped or inverted class­room, but also online courses, videos can be one or the basis to pre­pare for the later con­tact time, the exchange about the source mate­r­ial (Aldrian 2019: 5). Videos can also be of a sum­ma­riz­ing nature, for exam­ple at the end of a course (Aldrian 2019: 5). In their sum­ma­riz­ing func­tion, they can also rhyth­mi­cally struc­ture indi­vid­ual sec­tions of an event in advance: See below and fur­ther­more mul­ti­me­dia prin­ci­ples.
• Be the ‘dri­ving force’ — cre­ate an incen­tive, offer an intro­duc­tion. Videos are suit­able for intro­duc­ing learn­ers to a sub­ject. This is because they cor­re­spond to the “media usage habits of learn­ers” (Harder n.d.: 102). Espe­cially at the begin­ning of a series of events, elab­o­rate and cap­ti­vat­ing videos are likely to be advan­ta­geous, as they can have a pio­neer­ing char­ac­ter, as a first impres­sion to encour­age the learner to stick with the course.
• Vari­ety, rhythm — diver­sity as an ele­ment of “good” teach­ing: Cer­tainly not exclu­sive to the mov­ing image, a “dif­fer­ent” medium or video can offer vari­ety, for exam­ple by intro­duc­ing it into the the­o­ret­i­cal phase of a course, accord­ing to Aldrian (2019: 5). The use of instruc­tional and explana­tory videos can also be under­stood in terms of the def­i­n­i­tion of good teach­ing (Meyer 2020): a video as a “meso­di­dac­tic” (Meyer 2020, 74 ff.) method­ol­ogy. Method­olog­i­cal and media diver­sity can con­tribute to main­tain­ing or regain­ing the atten­tion of learn­ers on the part of teach­ers.
• Learn­ing through teach­ing (Ebener/Schön 2017: 4): Videos real­ized by stu­dents can be used to teach other stu­dents. This approach gives stu­dents an insight into the media char­ac­ter­is­tics of the mov­ing image (≈ media lit­er­acy) and strength­ens their abil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate facts to oth­ers. In this regard, how­ever, teach­ers must pro­vide sup­port mea­sures for video pro­duc­tion and take into account the resources avail­able to stu­dents.

Potential from a production perspective

• Pick­ing up on the famil­iar (≈ medium of film) on the part of learn­ers: Edu­ca­tional and explana­tory videos offer poten­tial due to their con­ven­tion­al­ity — we grow up with mov­ing images from an early age and the pro­por­tion of videos on the Inter­net has been grow­ing for years. In this respect, it is not nec­es­sar­ily nec­es­sary to learn to under­stand films; basic skills are already avail­able. Despite the improb­a­bil­ity of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, which also applies to teach­ing and learn­ing, at least a first hur­dle in the sense of open­ing doors can be over­come in this way.
• Adap­ta­tion to specifics/target group through own pro­duc­tion: Instruc­tional and explana­tory videos pro­duced by your­self can offer the poten­tial that you as the pro­ducer can specif­i­cally address spe­cific facts and top­ics as well as the respec­tive tar­get group and their sit­u­a­tion; you do not nec­es­sar­ily have to fall back on ready-made mate­ri­als. Once a project file has been cre­ated, it can be changed/adapted if nec­es­sary — albeit not with­out effort.
• (Effi­ciency on the part of pro­duc­ers — through retriev­able data sets, ver­sion­able project files): Record­ings of teach­ing events allow for effi­cient teach­ing inso­far as the mate­r­ial can be used mul­ti­ple times — ini­tially on the part of learn­ers: videos can be viewed, stopped and rewound mul­ti­ple times (Rosen­baum 2018; Aldrian 2019: 6). Record­ings of lec­tures can facil­i­tate prepara­tory and fol­low-up work — inverted class­room (Aldrian 2019: 6). In gen­eral, and not only in the con­text of the pan­demic, edu­ca­tional videos offer the oppor­tu­nity for indi­vid­ual teach­ing and learn­ing that is inde­pen­dent of time and place ≈ asyn­chro­nous teach­ing. Teach­ers can use mate­ri­als mul­ti­ple times — in the next semes­ter, for exam­ple. Mate­ri­als can be adapted — with more or less effort. OER mate­ri­als can develop poten­tial in terms of effi­ciency and, if nec­es­sary, the tar­geted adap­ta­tion of a video: If they are open file for­mats, i.e. in the case of video pri­mar­ily project files, includ­ing inte­grated or linked, freely licensed files. The brack­ets around the term effi­ciency result from the fact that film pro­duc­tion can be described as com­plex and/or resource-inten­sive.

Excursus (OER) openness and the moving image

OER, or Open Edu­ca­tional Resources, are reg­u­larly asso­ci­ated with the term open­ness. This is because, in the spirit of OER, mate­ri­als can be reused and even edited by oth­ers through open­ness, depend­ing on the license. Ide­ally, open file for­mats should be used for stor­age so that reusers can eas­ily adapt or even expand the mate­r­ial to suit their needs. But what does open mean specif­i­cally for the field of video? Not exclu­sively for video, but mainly due to its mul­ti­me­dia nature(at least sound and image etc.), films could cur­rently (state of the art) always be under­stood as closed: The indi­vid­ual ele­ments from which the video is cre­ated can­not be extracted from the final file and edited sep­a­rately with­out effort, or some­times not at all. “Non-exclu­sive” has antic­i­pated this: Basi­cally, this also applies to image files — such as a JPEG or a PNG. In the con­text of videos, open can there­fore pri­mar­ily mean that the video file is saved in a for­mat that can be opened by as many sub­se­quent users as pos­si­ble — in the sense of playa­bil­ity. If the video is to be pro­vided with inter­ac­tiv­ity via an H5P plu­gin, the video should be avail­able in MP4 or Webm for­mat, for exam­ple. And: It is meant that the video file can be opened and cut etc. by com­mon video edit­ing pro­grams. Ide­ally, in the con­text of videos and OER, open means that the project files of a video / the edit­ing soft­ware, includ­ing the ele­ments linked in this project file, can also be uploaded to an OER plat­form. This would allow users to access indi­vid­ual ele­ments such as music, sound effects, embed­ded graph­ics and the video mate­r­ial itself. Restric­tion / for the sake of trans­parency: How­ever, this process is asso­ci­ated with con­sid­er­able effort for the upload­ing per­son / author.

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The chal­lenges in the field of teach­ing and learn­ing videos
Image by Sönke Hahn based on Sarah Brock­mann, released under CC BY 4.0

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Critical comment on the use of instructional videos

Not only in this, but also in the pre­vi­ous parts of this blog series, it has been repeat­edly men­tioned that the use of teach­ing and learn­ing videos, despite their great poten­tial, some­times poses chal­lenges for both learn­ers and teach­ers. Or that edu­ca­tional videos do not always pro­mote learn­ing — we would like to share three crit­i­cal com­ments with you:

• Sequen­tial­ity of the medium: It is both an advan­tage and a dis­ad­van­tage — the nature of the medium itself. Film is a sequen­tial medium: indi­vid­ual images fol­low one another. This means that a movie can never be viewed ad hoc. It is nec­es­sary to scroll through the file, as far as pos­si­ble, in order to be able to grasp all facets and then only in an overview. Printed mate­r­ial, on the other hand, can be viewed with­out any major tech­ni­cal equip­ment or infra­struc­ture. On the other hand, a sheet as such can be cap­tured quickly. How­ever, the page can at best depict processes in a catchy or defin­i­tive way in the sense of a flip book — as pages of a book. (Of course, it can be argued that a page, like a sin­gle image, is often enough ‘only’ part of a sequence. In addi­tion, the higher res­o­lu­tions of the mov­ing image should make it pos­si­ble to depict sim­i­larly com­pre­hen­sive infor­ma­tion in the video in the long term).
• skills (and bud­get on the part of the peo­ple pro­duc­ing the videos): The pro­duc­tion of even short videos is usu­ally time-con­sum­ing and requires basic knowl­edge of design and nar­ra­tion. These skills reg­u­larly go beyond those of mere con­sump­tion. It is no coin­ci­dence that there are cor­re­spond­ing degree courses in mov­ing image and/or audio­vi­sual design. On the other hand, knowl­edge of both the soft­ware in ques­tion and the tech­nol­ogy required must be taken into account. The same applies to the bud­get and the time required to pro­duce an edu­ca­tional or explana­tory video. Explain­ing some­thing ad hoc is gen­er­ally out of the ques­tion, despite pow­er­ful smart­phones. An aware­ness of the con­nec­tion between form/how and content/what is nec­es­sary: Not only should a video be designed, real­ized and used with an over­ar­ch­ing teach­ing con­cept in mind, the video itself should also cor­re­spond to didac­tic and/or com­mu­nica­tive con­sid­er­a­tions and lev­els of knowl­edge. Every medium, includ­ing film, is based on an insep­a­ra­ble rela­tion­ship between form and con­tent. In other words, suc­cess­ful con­tent can suf­fer from an ill-con­sid­ered form — because it may then not be able to win over learn­ers or pick them up in their world in a vivid and tar­get group-spe­cific way. Then: Although a human need for aes­thet­ics (Maslow — more on this in a moment) can be assumed, an excess of purely dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments can be dis­tract­ing (Mayer 2021: 143). In con­crete terms, as seen in the first part of this blog post, it is advis­able to take a look at the so-called mul­ti­me­dia prin­ci­ples in order to weigh up or even reduce sound-image clashes and min­i­mize the over­load­ing of the same infor­ma­tion on dif­fer­ent chan­nels (≈ 1:1 pre-read­ing).
• Grow­ing expec­ta­tions on the part of the audience/learners: Expe­ri­ence has shown that the spread of mov­ing images increases the expec­ta­tions of the audi­ence, i.e. learn­ers. Pix­e­lated or acousti­cally unso­phis­ti­cated con­tent is there­fore more likely to be demo­ti­vat­ing than fully appre­ci­ated. A higher tech­ni­cal qual­ity should also con­tribute to the under­stand­ing of the intended con­tent, as the sound and image can be bet­ter grasped and are not in dan­ger of being lost in a mish­mash of pix­els (Aldrian 2019: 6). Low-qual­ity mate­ri­als are also likely to be of lim­ited long-term use — for teach­ers and learn­ers. Cer­tainly not every video needs to be real­ized in 4k or 8k res­o­lu­tion. If pos­si­ble, FullHD (1080p) should be achieved now (2022). In addi­tion to a cer­tain tech­ni­cal and tech­ni­cal value, aes­thet­ics must also be under­stood as an added value in the con­text of teach­ing and learn­ing: The need cat­e­gories of the US-Amer­i­can psy­chol­o­gist, Abra­ham Maslow (1970: 51) sug­gest that aes­thet­ics is a human need. Aes­thet­i­cally suc­cess­ful works are held in higher esteem (Yablon­ski 2020: 59 ff.).
• Reduc­tion trap — too sim­ple: In order to com­ply with any (albeit ques­tion­able) rules of thumb regard­ing the ideal length of a video, to coun­ter­act the media noise of our time, to pro­duce crisp teach­ing units in video form, there is a risk of con­ceived con­tent being short­ened exces­sively. There is a risk that the intended con­tent and its com­plex­ity will not be ade­quately grasped by learn­ers (Ebner/Schön 2017: 7) because it does not prove to be a chal­lenge. This field may also include the fact that reduc­tion, under­stood as sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, can cause learn­ers to over­es­ti­mate things: “Every­thing seems so sim­ple.” The con­cept of flow from the 1970s in the sense of the Hun­gar­ian psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Robert Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi (1990) sug­gests that a kind of bal­ance between require­ments and abil­i­ties should be kept in mind in our case of learn­ers — in order to pro­mote said flow. In a mod­er­ate ver­sion, this can be under­stood as a com­pre­hen­sive expe­ri­ence of con­cen­tra­tion. In this respect, pro­gres­sion in this direc­tion should be achieved either in the course of a series of teach­ing units and instruc­tional videos or within a video with increas­ing con­tent and/or audio­vi­sual chal­lenges: This is because any­thing too sim­ple can demo­ti­vate rather than encour­age peo­ple to stick with it — anal­o­gous to those chal­lenges that, because they are not appro­pri­ate for the tar­get group, can­not be mas­tered at all. A grad­ual increase can be achieved between the two extremes in order to pro­mote the afore­men­tioned flow.

Conclusion

Instruc­tional and explana­tory videos offer a wide range of poten­tial in teach­ing and for learn­ing — they are uni­ver­sally famil­iar by con­ven­tion; didac­ti­cally, their mul­ti­me­dia and sequen­tial nature offers oppor­tu­ni­ties to teach in a more catchy (process-like) way, to make time vis­i­ble; as retriev­able files, they can pro­mote asyn­chro­nous, gen­er­ally indi­vid­ual teach­ing and can be used on sev­eral occa­sions in the long term. How­ever, the use of edu­ca­tional and explana­tory videos also presents teach­ers with chal­lenges — in terms of nar­ra­tive and design skills, bud­get, time and tech­nol­ogy. At the same time, it is worth get­ting started in this field because, as with many skills, it is pos­si­ble to build on an ini­tial basis in fur­ther projects and skills grow from project to project. This col­lec­tion of tem­plates and hand­outs for video pro­duc­tion on twillo.de offers con­crete help with pro­duc­tion, from con­cep­tion to real­iza­tion. This was cre­ated in line with the didac­tic ori­en­ta­tion of the OER plat­form twillo to sup­port teach­ing. In addi­tion to the types, the col­lec­tion explains the work­flow and sup­ports the cre­ation of a ten­sion sheet, the writ­ing of a script and/or the cre­ation of a sto­ry­board — using tem­plates and hand­outs. In case you missed the first two parts:

• Part I: Char­ac­ter­is­tics and didac­tics of instruc­tional videos
• Part II: For­mats and fields of edu­ca­tional videos

Or take a look directly at our col­lec­tion on twillo to go into medias res — includ­ing hand­outs with back­ground infor­ma­tion and tem­plates.

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.

References

Aldrian, S. (2019): Teach­ing video. Cen­ter for Uni­ver­sity Didac­tics. Uni­ver­sity of Applied Sci­ences of Busi­ness, Graz. URL: https://www.campus02.at/hochschuldidaktik/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/09/Lehrvideo.pdf (retrieved on 15.03.2022).

Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi, M. (1990): Flow: The Psy­chol­ogy of Opti­mal Expe­ri­ence. New York: Harper and Row.

Ebner, M. / Schön, (2017): Learn­ing and teach­ing videos: Design, pro­duc­tion, use. E‑learning hand­book. 71st sup­ple­ment (Octo­ber 2017). 4.61. S. 1–14.

Hahn, S. (2018): The six­fold nature of immer­sion: an attempt to (dis­cur­sively) define a multi-lay­ered con­cept URL: https://www.academia.edu/35937976/Die_Sechsfalt_der_Immersion_Versuch_der_diskursiven_Definition_eines_vielschichtigen_Konzepts (15.03.2022).

Harder, S. (n.d.): Teach­ing videos. Pos­si­ble uses in part-time stud­ies. URL: https://www.uni-rostock.de/storages/uni-rostock/UniHome/Weiterbildung/KOSMOS/Lehrvideos.pdf (retrieved on 15.03.2022).

Maslow, A. (1970): Moti­va­tion and Per­son­al­ity. Harper & Row.

Mayer, R. E. (2021): Mul­ti­me­dia Learn­ing. Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press.

Meyer, H. (2020): What is good teach­ing? Cor­nelsen: Berlin

Rosen­baum, L. (2018): “Youtube — Devel­op­ing edu­ca­tional videos into an inter­ac­tive learn­ing expe­ri­ence” In: Blog E‑Learning Zen­trum Hochschule für Wis­senschaft und Recht Berlin. URL: https://blog.hwr-berlin.de/elerner/youtube-lernvideos-zu-einem-interaktiven-lernerlebnis-weiterentwickeln/ (accessed on 15.03.2022).

Sailer, M. / Figas, P. (2015): “Audio­vi­sual edu­ca­tional media in uni­ver­sity teach­ing. An exper­i­men­tal study on two learn­ing video types in sta­tis­tics teach­ing” In: Edu­ca­tional Research 12 (2015) 1, pp. 77–99.

Schmidt-Borcherd­ing, F. / Dren­del, L. (2021): “Explana­tory videos in dig­i­tal uni­ver­sity teach­ing: What role do speaker pres­ence and coher­ence play for learner learn­ing and learn­ing suc­cess?” In: die hochschullehre, 8, pp. 69–76.

Sei­del, N. (2018): “Task types for the inter­ac­tion of e‑assessment and learn­ing videos” In: Tech­nis­che Uni­ver­sität Bergakademie Freiberg (ed.): Video­cam­pus Sach­sen — Fea­si­bil­ity study, pp. 45–60.

Yablon­ski, J. (2020): Law of UX. 10 prac­ti­cal prin­ci­ples for intu­itive, human-cen­tered UX design. O’Reilly/dpunkt: Hei­del­berg.

Zan­der, S. / Behrens, A. / Mehlhorn, S. (2018): “Explana­tory videos as a for­mat for e‑learning” In: Niege­mann H., Wein­berger A. (eds.): Learn­ing with edu­ca­tional tech­nolo­gies. Springer: Berlin, Hei­del­berg.

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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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