The Brain and Videos

Last week I wrote about a teacher who is telling students that people cannot learn from videos and that teachers in college never use videos.  I suspect her attitude came from the fact she has never learned to be an active watcher.

I found information on how the brain processes the information from a video.  The first element to consider is cognitive load. It has been suggested the memory is made up of several parts.  The sensory memory which is transient and it collects information from the environment.

Information from the sensory memory may end up in the temporary storage or processed in the working memory which has limited space.  The processing is a precursor to encoding the information into long term memory which has unlimited space.  Due to the limitations of the working memory, the viewer must be selective about what they choose to remember.

Cognitive load is composed of three parts.  The first part is the intrinsic load which is determined by the amount of connectivity felt by the viewer.  The second is the germane load is the amount of cognitive activity needed to reach the learning outcome and the third part is extraneous load or the material that is not directly associated with the topic.

In response to this, four practices are recommended to make video learning more effective.  The first is signaling or cuing which uses on screen text or symbols to indicate important information.  Signaling may be by a few key words, a change in color, or a symbol to draw attention to a part of the screen.  Next is segmenting which is the chunking of information so they have control over the flow of new information.  This can be accomplished by breaking the video into small pieces with questions sprinkled throughout so they cannot move forward until they've answered the question.

Another recommendation is weeding or getting rid of any extra material such as music when the person is talking, or extra animation.  It means to eliminate any extra things that can make it harder for the listener to decide if its material they should learn.  The final is matching modality or using both audio/verbal with visual/pictorial to share the new information.  An example of this would be to show a process while explaining it so they have both channels engaged.

So when choosing videos, keep them short of no longer than six minutes.  Make sure the voice over is done in a casual conversational style rather than formal language  because the conversational style makes students feel as if they are partners.  The narrator should speak at a normal speed with enthusiasm. 

For students to get the most out of videos we need to teach them active learning skills such as guiding questions so they know what is important and to help them pay attention rather than switching into a passive watching style.  Make sure the video has interactive controls so the student can rewatch segments as needed and so they have control of the speed at which they move through the video.  Integrate questions into the video.  Research shows that embedded questions increase the understanding and retention of the material in the video.

So videos can be an effective part of the classroom as long as they meet the above criteria so a to meet student learning needs. 

Let me know what you think.  I'd love to hear.