Video Quantity: How Much Video Should a Course Have?

Not everyone learns well by watching videos.

One of the stronger and perhaps more obvious reasons for not making tons of course videos is that not everyone learns well with video. In addition to students with any visual disabilities, there are some students who would just learn the material better if it was in a different format (like a document).

In addition, in order for any course video to be effective, students need to be primed. That is, they need to be reminded that the course videos contain content critical to their success in the course, and that they should consume the videos actively. That means taking notes, re-watching as needed, no multitasking, etc. Students tend to perceive video as easier to learn from than text, and as a result novice learners in particular may get a false sense of how much they're learning (Brame, 2016).

One strategy to encourage both active consumption and a more accurate metacognitive self-portrait is to either embed in-video quiz questions (read our documentation on Kaltura's in-video quiz questions if you're interested in doing this in Canvas), or require a short quiz after each video. Formative assessments like these serve to overcome the inherent passivity that video-watching can instill.

Lecture by itself doesn't take advantage of the video medium.

Whether they're generated in a studio, live on Zoom, or filmed at home, "talking head" videos dominate remote and online courses: an instructor lecturing onscreen with a visual presentation running. Filming an instructor speaking over static imagery and text, however, is fundamentally not a great use of the moving picture.

Video is meant to capture movement and visual change. Some students report that they would prefer just to read the video's transcript (ideally one that has any pictures used in the presentation) rather than watching it. Most folks can read faster than they can watch and listen, after all.

Try to think outside the box a little bit. Our article on effective course videos should give you some ideas, such as module introductions or videos where you address common misconceptions. All of the types of video we discuss in the article take advantage of the medium or have the opportunity to provide particularly strong pedagogical value. Just because you're using visual material to complement your instruction doesn't mean that the delivery medium needs to be video. You can just as easily write a text-based document and embed images.

All of these categories of video take advantage of the medium or have the opportunity to provide particularly strong pedagogical value. Just because you're using visual material to complement your instruction doesn't mean that the delivery medium needs to be video. You can just as easily write a text-based document and embed images.

Authors of an expansive study of EdX video watch data make a helpful distinction between lecture videos (which teach declarative or conceptual knowledge) and tutorial videos (which present how-to / procedural knowledge). They observed that students tended to engage more with the latter - pausing them, re-watching them, etc. (Guo et al, 2014). They also noticed that there was increased engagement with so-called "Khan-style" videos - voiceover screen captures that involve the instructor continually writing.

So before spending the effort to develop a video, ask yourself: does it really need to be a video? Does it benefit from moving pictures and spoken words?

They're difficult to break up and don't create a good sense of connection between you and future student cohorts.

If you have a collection of lectures captured from a live, in-person class, it may seem logical to reuse them. Why not? You deliver many of the same lectures from year to year, after all.

Unfortunately, classroom recordings are a good example of highly contextual content that ideally shouldn't be reused for students in future courses. One of the reasons that videos in general can be pedagogically effective is because of the perception of social partnership created between the instructor and learner - a "suspension of disbelief," of sorts - that fosters engagement and motivation. This is one of the key components of social agency theory, which argues that "seeing the instructor makes learners believe that s/he is personally teaching them, which leads to deeper cognitive processing and, in turn, better learning outcomes" (Ng & Przybylek, 2021).

This is also an argument in favor of avoiding too much context in your pre-produced videos. With that in mind, avoid referring to current events, due dates, or anything else that may break the illusion that the video is relevant to any cohort of students.

Ultimately, presenting students with a recording of a previous class doesn't create much of a sense of connection. Additionally, it's unlikely that you looked at the camera in these recordings, and Fiorella et al suggest that eye contact is what creates that sense of social presence and interpersonal connection, not just the visibility of the instructor onscreen (Fiorella et al, 2019).

Classroom lecture videos are also hard to segment or "chunk." If you read our article about video length, you know that videos should ideally be 12 minutes or fewer. Chances are, though, that most of your classroom recordings are as long as the entire class period, oftentimes no fewer than 50 minutes. Long lectures may present time-consuming editing challenges when trying to break them up into more appropriately-sized chunks.

Now, an existing library of past classroom recordings can come in handy in a variety of circumstances, such as when you need to miss a class or unexpectedly need to teach remotely. But on balance, course videos should be designed and delivered with an asynchronous, online learning environment in mind to maximize their efficacy.

Planning, writing, storyboarding, and editing course videos positively impacts their efficacy. This takes time.

It may seem obvious that spending time working on something is likely to make it better, but digging into this a little bit may help to dispel the myth that videos by themselves are more engaging or effective than text (or other media) simply because they're videos. That said, videos don't have to be shot in a multimillion dollar studio in order to be good - videos you shoot yourself at home can be just as effective if you keep best practices in mind.

Whether you're working with professional videographers or using your own equipment at home, though, one point that Guo et al make in their article "How Video Production Affects Student Engagement: An Empirical Study of MOOC Videos'' is that pre-production matters: "to maximize student engagement, instructors must plan their lessons specifically for an online video format. Presentation styles that have worked well for centuries in traditional in-person lectures do not necessarily make for effective online educational videos" (2014). Though it's backed up by a considerable amount of data, the argument may be obvious: videos that are designed in advance, segmented, aligned with learning objectives, utilize carefully-designed PowerPoint presentations, etc. - those tend to be better than videos just shot on the fly. Pre-production makes for better videos.

This principle is heavily supported by research on cognitive load theory as it pertains to multimedia design. If you've read our article on multimedia learning principles and/or our article on research-based presentation design guidelines, you're aware that you can't just slap together a PowerPoint presentation to add to your video and expect it to be helpful to students. You have to construct each slide carefully, adding animations and being sure to guide your students' attention while also ensuring that you're not overwhelming their cognitive resources. If you want to make an effective course video, that PowerPoint presentation has to be carefully designed. Expect to spend more time than you may be used to developing your presentation.

Another finding of Guo et al's study was that voiceover PowerPoint videos were more effective when the instructor's head was spliced in at so-called "opportune" times (2014). As you might be able to tell from the quote, the editing choices were made by professional editors in post-production. So, if there's nothing visually interesting or relevant onscreen, cutting to the instructor's face can be compelling, but this obviously requires post-production effort.

The bottom line is that if you want to make effective course videos, you're going to need to invest time in all stages of the production process: pre-production (scripting, storyboarding), production (filming), and post-production (editing).

Making your video truly accessible takes more work than you might expect, in particular generating accurate captions and possibly even an audio description.

Accessibility law is affirmative: you must make your material perceivable to all learners when you make it, rather than waiting for a student to complain that something is inaccessible. So your videos need to meet accessibility standards before you present them to students in your course.

Accessibility requirements for video are largely dictated by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). There are three levels of compliance - A, AA, and AAA - and case law suggests that universities are generally expected to adhere to the middle (or "AA") standard. This boils down to the following requirements for course videos in postsecondary education:

1. Captions: You have to provide captions for multimedia UNLESS the video is an equivalent alternative for a text version of the content (and labeled as such). Note that an "equivalent alternative" in this case refers to a text-based version with the same educational content; it shouldn't be better or worse to consume the content in either medium.
2. Audio description: You have to provide an audio description UNLESS all the relevant visual information is contained within the existing audio track. Color: Don't use color as the sole means of conveying information.
3. Contrast
   1. "Large" text (greater than 18 pt font size OR 14 pt bold font size) must have a contrast ratio of at least 3 :1. "
   2. Small" text must have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 : 1.

If you're using PowerPoint templates, chances are that color and contrast aren't necessarily a big problem. But captions and audio descriptions can take up a lot of time - particularly the latter.

If you've used Kaltura, you've probably encountered machine captions, software-generated captions that are about 70% accurate. To truly abide by the spirit of accessibility, however, your captions should be 100% accurate. After all, how could someone who has to read your captions get the same educational value as someone who can hear and see the videos when one out of three transcribed words is incorrect?

You could pay a service to caption your videos (by a human), but you're typically going to be paying between $1 and $2 per minute of media. Those costs can really add up for a large quantity of videos. So lacking any funding to pay a captioning service, you'll need to a) edit your captions manually, which can take 2-3 times the length of the video (depending on how fast you can type and how accurate the captions are); and b) ensure that when you recorded your video, that you were careful to describe all relevant visual information (to preclude the need for an audio description).

The bottom line is that in order for your videos to be truly accessible, you have to spend a good amount of time - or money.