Yesterday I attended the second live session of this weeks ‘Big Sponge Hangout’ James Barton, Online Learning Manager at Royal Mail talked us through the thinking behind the use of interactive video within e-lessons. James explained the need for something simple and effective that is approachable for any manager within the operations team.
Enter interactive video….
James shared a short section of an e-lesson with us, and we worked through a variety of branching scenarios, brought to life via video. What I loved, was how realistic it all felt. Using a point of view camera to capture the video allows the manager to react how they would in a real working environment.
James talked us through some of the issues and benefits they found with using interactive video. Starting with the obvious, video is not cheap, and due to the price of video, a major thought process was put in place to consider longevity, simple things like uniform can make a video look dated.
One of the key benefits that Royal Mail found on the back of this training was the feedback, 56% of people enjoyed the interactive video more than the previous training they had completed, and 73% tried out the techniques from the training in real working situations.
Some of James’ key tips were to keep it simple, shallow branching is key to keep users engaged and interested. “simplicity is the word of the year in digital learning”.
He also explained how they used animation and images alongside the video to keep the user engaged. It’s about taking the user on a journey of learning, making it approachable and remembering, it has to suit everyone.
Do you agree? Have you ever tried interactive video and had success? I’d love to hear your opinions.
Register free to access this session along with all other #spongehangout resources - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-big-sponge-hangout-registration-26051288104
Replies
Thanks Lucy. This is a great post. Also interested to hear what others have done with interactive video.
Just the other day I saw a video with three simple steps in. It dawned on me that by the end of the short video, I couldn't remember step 2, nor could I remember what was involved in step 1 or 2.
So perhaps interactive videos are a great way of allowing people to explore content in a non-linear fashion. It perhaps would have been better with some simple video interaction which allowed me to go into whichever step I wanted to in order to find out more. Yes, I'd probably still review them in the order 1,2 then 3, but at least i could have hopped back into 1 or 2 if I needed to.