What to Look for in Educational Videos for Your Courseware

With the global e-Learning market expected to grow to $275 billion by 2022, according to a report by Orbis Research, and over 5 billion videos watched on YouTube daily, the appetite for both online learning and video is huge. No surprise, then, that video is an essential element of any compelling courseware. 

However, not all video is created equal and, when you’re designing courseware, it can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to selecting the best videos for your learning materials. There’s a lot at stake, so it’s important to get things right! 

To help you make the best possible choices, there are several vital elements to consider when deciding which videos to include in your courseware. Keep reading to find out exactly what you need to consider and why it’s so important when you’re designing engaging courses

1- Quality Content

The standard of the videos in your courseware is of paramount importance. High-quality content not only justifies premium pricing for your product, but it ensures that learners are kept engaged, happy, and making progress towards meeting their learning objectives.

The process of designing and producing interesting and high-quality videos that are structurally sound and in-line with what we know about cognitive learning theory is complex. It requires the coming together of a broad range of highly specialized skills as well as a significant investment of time and resources. All this can represent an overwhelming undertaking for instructional designers, especially if you are attempting to produce these videos from scratch.

Fortunately, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel: content providers specializing in the production of top-quality educational videos have it down to a fine art. When your video content comes from the likes of TED, Crash Course, Sci Show, Wonderscape Education, and PBS, the question of quality is a moot one.

2- Instructional Alignment

It goes without saying that every piece of content, practice activity, or assessment tool within an online course must be directly linked back to the learning objective. Video is, of course, no different.

To ensure you can choose an educational video perfectly aligned to your learning outcomes, you must have access to a wide enough choice to guarantee a perfect fit. Whether you are looking to align your courseware with the objectives of the UK National Curriculum, the US Common Core, a professional training program, or a curriculum you’re creating from scratch, you’ll need access to a range of content diverse enough to meet the needs of any learning objective.

3- Video Length

Research shows that short videos are much more effective at maintaining student engagement and knowledge retention, with around 6 minutes being the sweet spot. As video length increases beyond the magic 6-minute mark, students’ abilities to stay engaged decreases and significantly drops after about 9 minutes.

It’s important then, when choosing a video, to avoid cognitive overload by using videos that aren’t overly long and don’t contain irrelevant material. On the other hand, the videos do need to be long enough to provide value to the learner and help them progress on their learning path. 

If you want to keep students engaged and making progress, it’s best practice to keep things lean when it comes to length. According to the research, 6 to 9 minutes or so seems to be optimum to balance sustained engagement with learning value.

4- Ability to Edit

No matter how good a fit a curated video might be for your courseware needs, you may need to make adaptations to it - a final bit of tailoring to get that perfect fit.

For example, you may wish to segment a longer video into smaller more manageable chunks of information. Or, you might want to include signaling elements, such as the use of onscreen text or symbols, to help highlight the most important information for the learner.

When selecting an educational video for your courseware, you’ll want to make sure that no copyright or technical impediments are preventing you from making these final alterations. Extra points if the video provider you use can help with services like editing, subtitles, and voice-overs!

5- Access and Convenience

With the rush to digital learning gathering pace in recent years, it’s important to streamline the courseware creation process.

Video production is an extremely time and resource-intensive process. Arguably, it’s the most demanding courseware creation aspect of all and it can become a real stumbling block in an otherwise smooth workflow.

While many video streaming services exist, these services don’t solve the considerable problem of copyright and licensing for courseware creators. Nor do they solve the problems of quality control and suitability for use in an educational context. 

When looking for educational videos for your courseware, you want convenient and quick access to quality, relevant content made by reputable producers.

Find What You’re Looking For With Boclips

At Boclips we provide access to over 2 million high-quality educational videos along with the necessary expertise to help you find exactly what you’re looking for. 

Our library includes animations and documentary shorts from world-class providers such as TED, Smithsonian, and Crash Course, as well as news from household names such as Bloomberg and PBS, plus historical archives and editorial footage. With content from trusted sources, there’s no need to worry about unreliable information, nor open-video platform hassles such as broken links or distracting comment sections. 

To save you time, Boclips videos are enriched with comprehensive metadata to ensure maximum discoverability and they’re carefully sorted into curricula-aligned collections by our curriculum specialists. But don’t worry if you’re looking for something a little outside the box: our research team is also on hand to help you find that perfect fit for your courseware. Plus, we offer editing, subtitling, and language services to make sure that the content is exactly what you need  

To find out how you can make learning more captivating with video, just get in touch with our team.