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VIDEO – Interactive Video that Enriches Learning – Cheryl Horton

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At Learning Solutions 2015, I met Cheryl Horton, of the Ken Blanchard Company, when she was speaking at one of the Learning Stages in the Expo.

I found her presentation interesting and asked her to expand on a few of the things she spoke about.

PEOPLE ARE ADDICTED TO SCREENS

When people go online, they want interaction, in a non-stop fashion. People are essentially addicted to screens – big screen televisions, laptops, and also mobile devices. Online, we need to remember that screens are essentially our teachers. People have almost gotten to the point where they are more comfortable in front of a screen than they are in front of other people, talking face-to-face.

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Six Ways to Present Learning Content

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Along with the types of media you can create, you need a way to present that media to your learners.

presentation styles

The various ways to present information to your learners include:

  • Documents
  • Presentations (PowerPoint or Keynote)
  • Web Sites
  • Webinars
  • Videos
  • Web-Based Presentation Apps

Most of these styles should be familiar to you.

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Five Key Media Types for Learning Content

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One of the first design decisions you need to make as a content designer is what media you will use to create your content.

Media types

There are five key media types with which you need to be familiar. Each comes with its own series of pros and cons. In this article, we will review each one individually.

The media types are:

  • Text
  • Images and Graphics
  • Audio
  • Video
  • Live Presentations

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It May Have Gone Viral, But Is it Learning Content?

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At ATD ICE 2015, I had the experience of having a video go viral and it was intriguing to me.

viral
I did not set out to create a video that got almost 100% viewership and deeply connected with my viewers. It just happened by happy accident.

I had been part of a team that was planning an Instructional Systems Design program for our local ATD chapter and one of my discussions was around the topic “ISD is Dead”.

I love doing stuff like this! It ruffles feathers, gets people defensive, and starts a real conversation about a topic. My true purpose was to discuss how traditional ISD has evolved to meet the various types of media in which we deliver eLearning content.

As this situation played through, it seemed that it was a prime example of what I was trying to describe and intended to use it as a case study.

This video is obviously a piece of informational content, so let’s start there.

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My Experience With Viral Video at ATD ICE 2015

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On the Thursday of Pre-conference certification programs for ATD ICE 2015, I was working with my Volunteer Co-Chair to set up the Volunteer Office to be ready for volunteers from around the world, who would be showing up, starting on Saturday. We had about 200 Volunteers registered to assist us.

As Kristina Grant and I were walking the conference center once again to get to some remote location to deliver something or check on our volunteers working in the certification program events, I made an off-handed remark to her.

“We should do a video showing how far of a walk it is from the parking area to the volunteer office.”

Her response was “Really? I don’t want to do that.”

After some convincing that it would be fun, her and I set forth to create the simple video that would make me a viral sensation to our 200 volunteers.

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Learning Solutions – Use of Video – Steve Haskin

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My clients are starting to expect more and more videos of software demonstrations. Interestingly enough, the sales teams are also asking for videos, but of a different type. Lastly, my department is also starting to ask for marketing-style videos that introduce clients to our various services.

VIDEO IS BECOMING EXPECTED

It should be fairly obvious to most Instructional Designers and eLearning developers that video is becoming a desired content medium because our capability to deliver various types of media has become stronger and sites like YouTube become a more prevalent as a way to deliver training content. Learners like seeing faces, watching processes, and being entertained.

At Learning Solutions, this was one of the primary discussions that was happening. When should you use video? How do you create these videos? How long should these videos be? What role does “interactive video” play in your training delivery?

We can’t really ignore this medium for much longer. Development costs used to be one of the primary barriers. Another barrier was the skills needed to edit video. A third barrier might be how to deliver these videos to your customers. Most of these barriers have now been removed.

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Eight eLearning Skills and Roles You Need to Know About

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Step-2

As I was sitting in the various discussions of the 2011 Learning Solutions conference, it became clear to me that my career path was in a huge state of flux. I was both excited and scared at the same time. At my office, for quite some time, I was the sole Instructional Designer/Media Developer for my team. I handle the eLearning development of content for two enterprise systems that serve the financial industry. We had other people with the same role as I held throughout other areas of the company, but in our group, I was the only one. In my role, I use at least eight different eLearning skills and roles on a regular basis.

IT ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH TO CHANGE JUST ONE THING OR LEARN ONE NEW SKILL/

What had me a little concerned about all this change was that it was so interconnected that it wasn’t like you could really just pick up one thing, change that, and be done.

If I wanted to discuss eventually implementing xAPI, I had to bring the discussion of updating our Learning Management System to the table. I had to be able to understand how xAPI worked and it wasn’t documented clean enough for us non-programmer types.

If I wanted to bring video production into our deliverables, I needed to learn motion graphics, new video editing software, purchase the necessary equipment, and have a reliable way to deliver this content to my audience.

If I wanted to discuss implementing mLearning, we needed tablets to test on, we needed a familiarity with HTML5, we needed tools that could publish in that format, and we needed web servers we had ready access to use for testing.

Of course, the overarching concern in all of this was internet/data security. Being part of a financial services company requires a very high level of security. No direct access to WiFi, levels of control as to how large of a file you can put on a web server, and an LMS that affects multiple training and IT groups within the company.

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eLearning Mindset – Learning Something New Is Valuable

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A haunted attraction is potentially one of the hardest locations to shoot photography and video. There’s fog, rapid action, actors that like to lunge at the camera, and extremely low light environments. At the end of the 2012 Halloween season, I knew I needed to actually learn to be a better photographer if I intended to succeed in my role as the media specialist for a Halloween attraction I work with on the side.

I was noticing that most of my photos were blurry or that my camera wasn’t even letting me press the button to take the photo. It was possibly some of the most frustrating photo shoots I had been on.

Understand, I know my way around a video camera. I was in the television industry for about five years working for local news organizations and as an in-house video camera operator for a hotel convention center. I have rarely had issues with cameras. So, this was really getting me upset. Was I actually going to need to be learning something new?

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