Abstract:
With their expanding use in education, there is a growing interest in what constitutes effective design of instructional videos. Despite this interest, the various and often competing definitions of effectiveness have largely gone unexamined. This paper compares the results of a content analysis of a recently released YouTube course targeted at educational video producers with the various definitions of effectiveness in the existing literature on learning from video. Given the focus on extending watch times and optimising video to the YouTube recommender algorithm, seeking popularity, cultivating a brand, and satisfying an audience are unsurprisingly the central themes in YouTube’s course. Even fact-checking and credibility is discussed in terms of damage to brand reputation. Much of the case study literature examining the application of video based learning echoes these themes, reporting on student satisfaction, viewing statistics, and production methods. Unlike YouTube’s communications, however, these are couched in terms of engagement in learning and often coupled with test scores or other measures of teaching success. However, YouTube’s focus on popularity contrasts starkly with the measures of effectiveness in experimental literature on video design. Emerging from fields like the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, these tend to focus on efficient presentation of novel content in order to optimise recall and transfer performance. A focus on popularity recognises that a video no student watches can teach nothing, while a focus on efficient delivery of content recognises that some techniques used in the production of entertaining videos can lead to confusion or cognitive overload. This tension has been described by Muller (2017) as a “double bottom line”. These competing conceptualisations of effectiveness provide the basis for discussion of what constitutes a successful video, and suggest that further research is required into the apparent tension between student engagement, and cognitive efficiency.