In my last post I talked about ways to creatively leverage short video clips in your eLearning courses. In this installment, I’ll show 3 more techniques using clips of varying lengths. Remember, these samples were created with video clips that are freely available from popular stock photography sites like pexels.com, pixabay.com and many others. Using video in your own courses doesn’t require that you create the videos yourself or even spend money for clips, just the willingness to use a little creativity and the eLearning software you’re already familiar with. I used Articulate Storyline 360 to create these examples.
Using a clip to introduce your objectives
In this example, I automatically pause the video clip to point out important objectives that the Intro to Photography course will cover. When the user selects “Continue” the clip moves forward to the next pause point and so on, until all objectives have been shown. This technique is eye-catching, informative, and only 12 seconds long.
Annotate a clip to show process steps
This example is more traditional. As the step-by step cooking video plays, we have a list of the process steps down the left-hand side. Each step highlights in sequence as that portion of the video plays. This 1-minute example is pretty simple but the technique can be adapted for videos of all lengths and reinforces the process flow for learners.
Reveal and hide parts of a clip to direct attention
In this example, I reveal the video in stages and then hide parts of it to focus the user’s attention on a specific section of the video. Although my example uses the technique on a title slide, the same approach can be leveraged anytime you need give a user context (showing the whole video) and then direct their attention to the detail that matters.
I hope these examples get the creative juices flowing and help you use video clips in both engaging and effective ways in your own eLearning programs. (View them again: 1. Introduce objectives, 2. Annotate a clip, 3. Direct attention)
If you haven’t seen the first part of this series, be sure to check it out here. Feel free to drop a comment below and let me know what you think.