Video-based learning is essential for both young and old. For instance, it’s vital to help children with exceptionalities build their vocal/verbal skills.
Apart from that, it’s also essential to help people acquire specific learning skills. Imagine you are interested in preparing a particular type of meal, but you don’t know how to go about it.
You can easily go online and learn on video platforms like YouTube. One of the benefits of video-based learning is that it helps learners to boost their retention ability.
Apart from that, e-learning videos are highly engaging, and you can utilize them to demonstrate procedures for mastery learning. Besides, videos help to deliver concepts faster and provide useful visualization for complex tasks.
Many instructors are always interested in using videos to deliver their online training but unable to because they don’t know how to do it. Well, the good news is that there’s a way you can go about using e-learning videos.
All that’s required is for you to avoid some common errors, follow the best practices, and you’re sure of achieving the best results. In this article, we’ll be exploring a few dos and don’ts for successful video-based learning.
# Do: Ensure you diversify your platforms
Having diversified platforms is essential if you want to have successful video-based learning. While most people prefer watching videos on their PCs, some prefer downloading them offline and watching them on their mobile devices.
Also, most millennials prefer to stream videos online via video platforms. One way to diversify your platforms is by opting for a reliable video host like YouTube.
Doing that will enable your learning content to appear on all devices, including mobile. Another way is to utilize an LMS platform with mobile capabilities and host your video content directly from it.
# Don’t: Disregard load times
I’m sure you will agree with me that getting your learners to finish your online course can sometimes be hard. You don’t want to give them a reason not to complete your video course. So, ensure you avoid producing video content that takes a longer time to load.
The fact is your learners will get tired of your eLearning video course if it takes a long time to load. A better way of avoiding the low completion rate is by keeping your videos short and focused on a specific learning objective.
By so doing, they get to load and buffer faster and enable your learners to access the training smoothly.
# Do: Ensure you ask for feedback
Having taken the time to produce your video and uploading it to your e-learning platform, you’re sure it’s going to be engaging, right? However, it shouldn’t end there, as you need to ask for feedback from your learners to be certain your video is impactful.
You can get feedback from your learners by following the approaches below;
- The first approach to getting feedback from your learners is by giving them quizzes during your course. By so doing, you can be sure they are following your video, and they do understand the information you’re passing across to them.
- You can also make use of surveys after the training session. What you need to do is set up an automatic email and ask them to complete a survey on the video. Ask them questions that can help you improve your video content. For instance, you can ask if the video was easy for them to access. Also, you can ask if the video didn’t take a long time to load.
# Don’t: Leave your videos content stagnant
The truth is the older your videos get, the less relevant they become, for your learners. So, to keep your videos relevant, you should consider updating them consistently (quarterly or annually).
By so doing, you can be able to add some more engagement to the content for learners that are rewatching or watching them afresh.
# Do: Create a good storyboard
A storyboard is a blueprint of your e-learning video, and it’s a helpful way to understand how your video will look. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. However, you need to create it such that it reflects everything you need in your video.
Apart from that, you should also ensure that every other member of your development team, including the developers and tools experts, can understand it.