In this era full of interactivity, videos have become a great part of higher education. Multiple studies have shown that video can be a highly effective educational tool (e.g., Kay, 2012; Allen and Smith, 2012; Lloyd and Robertson, 2012; Rackaway, 2012; Hsin and Cigas, 2013). The interactivity and flexibility of videos will give more appeal to students.
But how does one makes a good educational video? Well, that’s what we’re here for! Let’s get into it, shall we?
How to make a great educational video?
Generally speaking, there are some key points to remember when making educational videos. To make educational content, keep in mind that you need to incorporate cognitive elements, engagement elements, and other elements that promote active elements. With that said, you can see some of the recommendations to achieve that goal:
1. Keep it short
No need to put as much information as possible in a single video
2. Use a conversational style
Using conversational rather than formal language can impact students better.
3. Speak relatively quickly and with enthusiasm
If you want your audience to be excited to follow your video, you need to show it with your behavior on screen.
4. Make sure the material feels like it is for these students in this class
Contextualize your video for the particular class for which they are being used. You also need to pay attention to the environment of your class.
5. Use guiding questions
Use guiding questions before they watch the video, this will provide clear instruction of the purpose of watching the video for your audience.
6. Use interactive features that give students control
Interactivity on videos gives students a feeling of satisfaction and makes the learning process more fun.
7. Integrate questions into the video
This is a part of incorporating active learning. Embedded questions in video improve students’ performance more than a video without an embedded video.
8. Make video part of a larger homework assignment
Also read: Corporate Videos: Why Is It Important For Brand Awareness
Step-by-step of making an educational video
Step 1: Planning
1. Brainstorming
The first thing you need to do is to brainstorm the ideas. Find an interesting topic and make sure they fit the needs of your target audience. You can also consider making animation videos to make them more interesting and interactive.
After that, you can create your first draft of what you want to include in your video.
2. Choose Your Style
Now, you need to choose your video style. Ask yourself some of these questions:
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Do you want to embed a slideshow presentation?
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Do you want your PowerPoint slide presentations to overlap or split-screen?
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Are you going to make a video with a whiteboard in it?
So, determine your video style first before planning anything else.
3. Plan a Storyboard
You can plan your storyboard with your videographer and draw the plan you have in mind.
Things to note for each shot:
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location settings
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subject in frame
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the direction they are facing
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type of shot (close-up, wide-angle, extreme close-up, etc.)
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movement
4. Write a Script
The next step is to prepare the video script.
Use catchy wordings in your introduction, statistics, questions, jokes, analogies, or anything else that will grab your audience’s attention. When writing a script, you need to pay attention to these things:
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Be yourself
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Keep it short and simple
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Be concise and focus on the important points.
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Thank the viewers for taking the time to watch your video
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Run the script again to make sure each word is natural and you feel comfortable with the script.
Step 2: Production
Video production can be a daunting task. However, having certain parameters in mind will help you to be more prepared and organized.
1. Exercise your script
Before you actually start, you need to exercise your script. Read the script aloud, speak slowly, and time yourself to check the length of the video.
Speak informally when using speech in the video. Make your video more personal rather than a “professional” one. You can pique your audience’s interest by making your instructor to speaks fairly quickly and passionately.
2. Consider the length of the video
Avoid long videos. Long videos will be boring and abandoned. A 3 to 5 minutes video is ideal when making an educational video. If your videos exceed that duration, you can make it into another separate part.
3. Determine video resolution
High-resolution videos are better visually. But they require high data rates on the internet, and in some cases, it may be harder for your audience to stream it. This is why you usually need to compress your videos first before uploading them to your site.
Common video resolutions that work well on the internet are:
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HD 1280×720: The quality is still relatively high, better than standard definition, but lower than Full HD.
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Standard resolution: 720×480
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Standard resolution: 640×480
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The resolution of videos commonly viewed over the Internet (e.g. YouTube) is 360p (480×360).
Step 3: Video Editing
Video editing involves several techniques, and if you’re open to learning new things, you’ll find that most video editing software has endless possibilities.
1. Audio mixing
No one likes to listen to quiet videos when learning. It will feel like they’re being lullabied to sleep! So mix your audio with a little background music, just to make it less empty. To add music to a clip, you need to separate the video clip from the audio clip.
After that, you can add your selected music and control the volume so it’s not overlapping with the main audio.
2. Green Screen Effect
When making an educational video, a green screen often becomes a needed technology to make a virtual background.
A green screen or chroma key allows you to remove some color from the video and merge two images or videos together based on the color chroma range. Keying is the process of isolating a single color, making its values transparent so that the affected area shows a different image.
This way you can overlay your video on a virtual background. For this, you will need a solid background (the most popular is a green background).
3. Voice Over
You can comment on edits that don’t have original sound or simply add a narrator dimension to your edits. Depending on the script, you can record your voice at the right moment.
4. Make it interactive
To make your videos more interactive, you can add animations such as motion graphics or even infographics.
5. Compress videos before uploading
Shorter video file sizes mean faster loading times and less buffering for the audience. With the right software, you can compress large video files to almost any format without compromising on quality
Start creating your own educational videos
Hopefully, you’ve come up with lots of new ideas and insights for your upcoming videos!
You have the talent, inspiration, and resources to make an educational video.
To make interesting video content for your educational purposes, you can always count on Superpixel to make it great. Feel free to contact us for our services.
