The interactive video

Drip. Hmm? Drip, drip. What’s that sound? Drip, drip. Well, that’s annoying. Where does it come from? Drip, drip, drip. Ah, the tap is leaking! Great… now what?

These days, if you need to fix something you probably look on YouTube first. Chances are there's an instructional video there teaching you how to fix it. We call this passive learning: you sit back, relax and watch a video to learn something new. After watching the video, you might decide to give it a go. And that’s where your learning becomes active: you actually engage with the content from the video.

Luckily, technology improves. Videos don't have to be passive any longer. No more sit back and relax. Let the watcher interact with the content of the video, making the experience more immersive and engaging. Interactive videos change the nature of learning from passive to active. How? Let's dive into the world of interactive videos: the what, why and how.

Why interactive video?

There are lots of reasons as to why you can choose for interactive video. Active learning engages learners in deep learning rather than surface learning. It helps promote higher order skills, meaning learners can apply and transfer knowledge better.

We live in a fast-moving world where everything is instant—messaging, live streaming, and learning. The way we consume content is changing. As consumers, we demand in-depth information delivered to us instantly. The interactive video offers this instantaneous nature and with divergent narratives and several different endings, we are no longer restricted to a single call to action or user experience.

And with an online platform, you can capture the decisions made and relay insights to your team whilst keeping the learner anonymous. Privacy is important when dealing with your employee’s personal development, but gaining an overall understanding of areas which need more support is extremely valuable and an opportunity to build further resilience.

By letting your learners go on an individual journey to maximize their own understanding, this takes away the task of an in-classroom trainer having to stop and start to explain separately. Instead, a good online platform will either provide a branched response (via a character, like a normal conversation) or a rational post-scenario to keep the learner immersed in a near life environment.

How to create interactive videos?

We are not diving into the technical aspects of creating an interactive video. Our interest goes out to how to create the content. Two formats we would like to highlight: re-versioning existing videos and role-play videos.

Re-versioning existing content is always an option and for an editor, it only takes a short amount of time. Editing or adding additional content can be done quickly. As the content owner it requires some thinking. First talk with your video editor to find out the different possibilities. Then watch your current videos carefully and constantly ask yourself the question: how can this become more interactive? Give the editor your input and you will be happily surprised about the differences. Instead of just watching, your people need to sit up straight and pay attention to the next action to come.

For role-play videos interactivity also opens a whole new world of opportunities. You can film actor’s multiple times, from different angles and with different reactions. Interactive video role-playing will give your people the chance to safely witness various unexpected situations on the learning objective. Resulting in developing creative problem-solving skills under realistic time-pressure which also builds confidence that can help them in their day-to-day roles.

As content owner you need to write multiple scripts and be very precise in how the role-play should be acted out. It is indeed more time consuming in the pre-production phase. But the fact that your people learn more pays back this time investment.

Passive learning is out!

Interactive video represents an exciting, evolving new format that can connect directly with learners on an emotional level, and engage them in their own growth and development.

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Rebecca van der Toorn
rebecca@parcourslearning.com