 In this video, we'll consider some of the issues that we should keep in mind while producing our videos, regarding the format of instructional videos. And we'll look at some of the things that research shows works best. Now how do we know what works when it comes to instructional videos? Well first, there is research out there, research, most of it has been done on MOOCs, which is the massive online courses built around videos. We can just simply look at the view numbers and how popular are certain types of videos, which ones are the videos that people are willing to spend time on, and then also look at what sorts of videos people buy, what are the kinds of things people will pay their own money for to learn from. And of course, we should also engage with the personal experiences and reflect on what works for us and then see how we can best integrate that into our work as video producers. Now there are different types of video formats. There's a talking hands-for-band, which is what you're seeing right now, there's screencasts, animations, documentary styles, lecture recordings. And I don't want to go through those aspects here right now, but I have prepared a sampler that is available on the Canvas course that this video is on as well. And you can go through the different types and styles of videos and compare different approaches to the same type and compare also different types and how perhaps they approach creating videos. And you can also then use that for personal reflection about what you think works best for you and what the scene is out there for in terms of instructional videos. Now, in this video, I want to address some of the typical questions people ask when they're thinking about the format of the video. So the length, speed of transition, speed of delivery, whether there should be a face or not, whether you should have a script or not, what is the production value, and things like that. So let's start with the most controversial question out there, which is how long should a video be? And very often you will hear something like this, video should be no more than two minutes when it's on the internet. And that simply is not true. In fact, a good video length of instructional video is anywhere between six and 12 minutes. At least that's kind of what the research suggests. And then here we can ask ourselves like, how well can we trust the data? And much of the data comes from the research on MOOCs, and that finds often the recommendations there are for shorter rather than longer videos. But if you look at actually what videos people will watch, then we'll see that that actually doesn't quite bear it all out. And often videos that are at the higher end of the length are just fine. So let's have a look at some examples of where I think this comes up. So first, let's have a look at the site business school YouTube page. And these are the top 15 videos. And then we'll see that the top five are an hour bit over an hour long. And there is another 17 minute video, but also here's another hour long video. So four out of top 15 are very long videos by the internet standards. And then we see that people are willing to spend the time because there was something interesting. But we don't have to just stay there. We can have a look at on YouTube, which helpfully shows us views. And I search for calculus so that we have videos on a similar topic. And these are the top five videos that YouTube recommended to me to watch film and to learn more about calculus. And as you will see, they're all over 15 minutes long. And in fact, the most popular one is an hour and a half long, and it has a million, 1.2 million views. And that is just somebody standing in front of a whiteboard pretty much lecturing the way they were in the classroom. But when people have a subject they're really interested in, they're willing to spend the time and watch a video as long as they can learn from it. So I think that is the important distinction to make is between video for education where somebody is trying to bring somebody along onto a journey through a topic and tries to engage them in the topic and explain it as deeply as they can versus a promotional video. And often, of course, there are many videos that are two minutes long that are a minute and a half too long. So very often it is worth our time to make a short video when we're looking at promotional issues. But for education, I think we can see that longer videos are fine. And the other thing to take into account is that the language of video is changing and people's expectations are changing. So for example, on YouTube, the typical video is now well over 10 minutes. If we look at what Linda is using, we'll find that they also have videos that are six to 12 minutes long. They're much shorter, but generally they break down longer topics into videos about six to 12 minutes. So that's probably the thing. It's a fairly reasonable amount of time to keep your video in those parameters. And for education, that I think should be OK. Now the other question is the speed of the video, the speed of delivery, speed of transitions. So how fast should you speak when you're recording a video? Well, it turns out that the people who recommend speaking very slowly and enunciating actually are wrong. The research seems to show that higher speed of delivery is better than lower speed of delivery. And higher speed in this case is about 170 words per minute or a bit more, perhaps a bit less, which is higher than the average, which is anywhere with 140 and 150 words per minute. And there's some research that was done on comparing some popular tech talks. And the average of five of the popular tech talks they were investigating was 173 words per minute. And some of them were even over 200 words per minute, some of them were a bit slower as well. So you can see that the speed of delivery actually should not be very slow. And people seem to be engaging better with a bit faster delivery. And many people like me even will listen at a double speed, which is something that I recommend to people to try because that way you can not only learn a bit more, but some people find it easier to focus. Now, how about the speed of transitions? Well, the research is not exactly clear, but it seems to just that a bit slower is better. So you don't want to change things all the time. But it is important to not stay too long on one side, but balance that with the need for not having too many transitions. So it's a bit of a balancing act, and it's important to pay a bit of attention. But there isn't one magical formula how to do it. But perhaps the more traditional documentary style where you switching shots and angles of you all the time isn't most appropriate for instructional videos, unless of course it's something that's relevant to what you're trying to do. The other question that people often ask is, should there even be a face of the person shouldn't just be just sound and some instructional imagery as in animation and things like that? And it seems that the research shows that many people prefer a face. Actually, the majority of people prefer to have a face. So something like me in the video improves their engagement. The research doesn't seem to indicate that there is much difference in terms of learning from the video. But it's also important to remember there are some people who find that person in the video very distracting. So again, you need to sort of balance that need of the majority who prefer having a face in the video, but there's a minority and not a small, necessarily tiny minority of people who rather just have the voice and some of the images in there. Now, the next question that people often ask is, is it necessary to write a script for a video? And there are some, again, some things to keep in mind when thinking about scripts. So making a script makes the video much more consistent. You have every time you try to record it, it's exactly the same. You make sure you don't skip anything you want to say. And for a short video, it may be necessary to do it. The shorter the video, the more scripted, the more tightly planned it has to be. But it turns out that with a script, the downside is that it's a lot harder to make. And also, people don't know how to write a script very well. And also, it's not that easy to read a script. So people are not used to reading out and sounding natural. So actually, the recommendation that I would have is try using without a script. Many people are quite able to talk about a subject they know well and they talk about often. Quite fluently, there is going to be a lot of small imperfections, a lot of stumbles. You have to backtrack. But that just makes the video more natural. And some people find that a lot easier than reading a script. I would say perhaps even most people. But some people do need to follow a script, or at least some very strict notes. And that is fine as well. But there is sort of a balancing act. There is not one right answer. But it's certainly not completely necessary to have a script. Finally, the question I want to address is, what is the ideal production value? And what is the production value? Production value is basically the whole quality of the video, look and feel, what the video looks like, what the lighting, and you can immediately tell. So here what you see here are screenshots of three videos from the same course on Linda, or now LinkedIn Learning. So it's a course on negotiation skills. And so this first video was a video made in the early days of Linda, which is basically a PowerPoint with a moving face here. And then this is a video, not on Linda, but on you by the same person who's selling the course there as a self-produced course. And this is the new version of that same course on Linda. And you can immediately see the difference in production value, so the increase in production value. So how important is that? And it turns out it actually isn't that important for learning. And people are not that concerned with production values when they're watching it and trying to learn from videos. So it's important that the videos look good enough. And then there is a distractingly bad, certainly. But it doesn't seem to be super important that they all look very slickly produced, even though, of course, Linda's got one of the gold standards in here. Another example here is let's compare two videos on the subject of limits. And so the first one is from a YouTube channel called Three Blue One Brown. And as you can see, it's a very highly animated, slickly produced video. This channel is well known for that, explaining the concept of limits. As you can see, there's little animations, there's lots of changes, trying to be very visual about what it's explaining. And on the other hand, we have on the same subject a video from Khan Academy. And then you can see it's simply what you're seeing. There's somebody similar writing on a blackboard and talking while they're doing that. And that, turns out, it may be even more effective than some of these slick videos, because there's a connection that the person can make with you. So the production value isn't super important. As you can see also, you can see that backtracking and deleting things and saying, oh, I made a mistake here. But all of that makes you feel like somebody's explaining something to you. Now, another comparison we can make is here between two videos on different topics. But I think quite instructive. So on the left-hand side is Norman J. Wildberg, who is a mathematician, who makes videos about mathematics on different subjects on mathematics. He has hundreds of videos. Some of them are quite popular. They have thousands of views. And then he's just talking in front of a whiteboard and pointing at it and explaining something in a very traditional way. But I think it's quite effective. On the other hand, we have a series of videos, Introduction to Economics from Marginal Revolution University, which is a blog that started making these videos, and by Tyler Cowan and Alex Taburg, to Economics from America. And you can see very highly produced slick videos, a little shorter than the mathematics ones, which are half an hour or even an hour long. These are usually under 10 minutes. And you can certainly see there's a huge difference at the glance. But in terms of education, which ones are more effective? I don't think it's at all clear that these slickly produced videos are more effective than the more traditional ones. It really depends on how much are people trying to learn from them on their own. So I just think it's important not to be stuck on the production values. And as long as the videos are easy to access and not destructively bad quality, I think they can be very much used for learning. So that's about video formats. And in the next video, we're going to have a look at some of the aspects of video production.