Guo et.al’s study (How Video Production Affects Student Engagement: An Empirical Study of MOOC Videos) offers some helpful insights into the use of online and classroom video materials – whether you’re creating your own videos or taking advantage of those, amateur and professional, created by others.
Although you can download the complete study, if you just want the juice the main points to come out of it are:
- Brevity (viewers generally tune out after six minutes)
- Informality, with professors seated at a desk, not standing behind a podium
- Lively visuals rather than static PowerPoint slides
- Fast talkers (professors seen as the most engaging spoke at 254 words per minute)
- More pauses, so viewers can soak in complex diagrams
- Web-friendly lessons (existing videos broken into shorter chunks are less effective than ones crafted for online audiences)