Out of all the known content for online courses right now, video is perhaps the most popular and effective ones out there. A mixture of sound, imagery, and animations, a video can actually enhance your online course to draw in a lot of students in an instant.
If you think that creating one and adding it to the course is hard, think again. It’s actually quite easy to create video lectures if you have the right skills and tools. Below are some tips that can help you make your video lecture, and the course in general, stand out.
1. Make the Text Engaging
Many would say that text is something that you should pay the least amount of attention to as the sounds and images in your video. The truth, however, is that the text you put in your video will actually help a lot in reinforcing your ideas and making them easier to remember.
When adding text to your video, always remember to KISS: Keep it Short and Simple. The simpler the words that you use, the better rate of retention the information your video contains will have with your students. As for capitalization, never use it unless you want to draw your students’ attention to a very specific line of information. As for the font, anything but Comic Sans and Times New Roman will do.
2. Keep Your Imagery Creative
It goes without saying but what your students will see in the video will actually determine whether or not it is an effective tool. Basically, the images you use should be relevant to the subject at hand and illustrates key points in the discussion. When compiling the images to be used, you should review its contents and decide whether or not each panel used is relevant or dispensable. The colors that you use is also quite important. The ones that you use should be associated with your brand as well as enhance the tone of the subject matter. Being consistent with your images and colors should also be considered so as not to break a person’s immersion.
3. Audio: Keep it Clear
For most of the time, the quality of your audio will be dependent on the capturing tool that you use as well as your microphone. It is best that you invest on a good audio recorder so that your students can easily make out what you just said. If possible, avoid using cheap headphones with microphone attachments as they tend to add a lisp to your voice upon recording and even amplify the sounds you make when breathing.
You should also brush up on your speech craft. Make it a point to delivery your ideas in a clear way. You don’t need to increase the volume of your tone but develop a habit of saying what you want to say without mumbling. Lastly, avoid using voice modulation/modification software as this can be distracting for some students.
4. Mind Your Exposure
If you have the confidence to show up in your videos yourself, you should also consider how you are being recorded. For starters, make sure that you are located at either the left, the right, or the center in each panel to keep things consistent. You can also opt to be recorded various angles with multiple cameras and then splicing these footage for the final video. With multiple angles, you can prevent your video from becoming too boring since your students will look at nothing else but your face for minutes on end.
5. Add Interactivity
Believe it or not, you can take your video to the next level and actually make it interactive. You can actually allow for discussions to happen in your lectures so to give your students the chance to apply what they learn or, at the least, catch up with the rest of the class. There are software out there like Zaption that allow you to put in interactive questions in the middle of your videos for students to click-through. This way, you can quickly how your students are faring and adjust your course accordingly.
The video that you use will actually help in enhancing the appeal of your course for customers. These tips are but a few of many that can help you create the best video content for e-learning out there. Just make sure that whatever you use for the video, be it texts, images, and footage, actually follows copyright policies to avoid problems in the future.