Bring life to your online course! Videos are the absolute craze among the methods for blended learning: they are entertaining, feel personal, and stick in your memory. Find out now in this article why you don’t have to choose between quality and ease of production!
This is why videos bring life to your blended learning
Do you remember your school days when the class cheered when a film was shown in class? For a long time – and perhaps still today – videos have been a method for teachers to keep students satisfied and calm with simple means. But our love for videos remains as we grow older. Even adults typically prefer moving images to static images or texts.
Our environment is dynamic, life is in motion. An online course takes place on a virtual level and risks appearing static and thus boring. Videos are a great tool for trainers to bring life into their blended learning.
Basically, other formats like quizzes or audio tracks are also a good way to ensure variety and liveliness in the online course. However, videos have another compelling advantage: they are the binding element between you and your participants – at least when you are visible in the video.
Videos in blended learning provide you with the following three major advantages:
Close emotional connection between trainer and participant
Fun and variety in training
Learning content stays in memory longer
Now take advantage of these benefits for yourself and create videos quickly and easily with your own smartphone! You don’t need much for that. To get started, a look at our guide for good video creation will help you. You will learn many helpful tips on what to consider when creating a video with your smartphone and where to find more information.
Videos in online courses are fun and help better process what has been learned.
Different types of videos for blended learning
The possibilities are numerous – my colleague Hans-Peter has listed 9 different types of videos in this blog post. Experienced trainers and coaches often choose the following types:
Selfie
Screencast
Scene
Note: In addition to these three typical types of videos in blended learning, there are several other variants imaginable. For instance, the typical explanatory video, where images, texts, and graphics work together (here is an example). This video type is great to watch and effective, but also very complex and expensive to produce. Many trainers and coaches therefore opt for much simpler types that still achieve a high impact.
Video type no. 1: The selfie
I call this type “The selfie” – because everyone can imagine what is meant: you as a trainer or coach stand in front of the camera, the viewer sees your face and a small part of your upper body. This variant is the unbeatable number 1 among trainers who work with blended learning. The reason: The selfie is easy to produce and creates a strong bond between trainer and participant. An example of a typical selfie video in blended learning:
Video type no. 2: The screencast
Sometimes trainers and coaches want to explain how participants should behave on a website or with a program. For this, you simply record your screen while you show with your mouse, touch, or trackpad what to do. You need software (for example, Screencastify), a digital device, like a laptop, PC, or tablet, and a microphone/headset.
The advantage of the screencast: you can clearly and simply demonstrate how something works digitally. The viewer can also pause your video and directly try out what has been said in a second window.
As an example of the screencast, I will show you a video I recorded a few years ago to present and analyze a learning platform for French:
Video type no. 3: The scene
The third popular type in training is a real scene that is filmed or recreated, which the viewer sees and assesses as an outside person. The advantage of the video type “scene” is that the situation depicted is very illustrative and provides the viewer with a real example to accompany the theory. Trainer Leif Kania has, for example, uploaded such a video type on YouTube:
In addition to the types mentioned, there are several other video styles for you to choose from. However, we recommend the types “selfie,” “screencast,” and “scene” for beginners because they are particularly appreciated by trainers and coaches due to their ease of production.
When to use? Videos are suitable in various training phases
As mentioned above, videos are a great method for blended learning. Trainers, consultants, and coaches upload short videos to their online courses to motivate their participants in the long term. In blended learning, we can generally distinguish three phases: the preparation for the presence event(s), the accompaniment during or between individual presence events, and the follow-up for the transfer after the presence event.
When are videos particularly useful in blended learning? Let’s take a brief look at all three phases to answer this question:
1st phase in blended learning: The preparation
Our tip: Always start your e-learning component in blended learning with a selfie video! Especially at the beginning, you want to “take your participants by the hand” and build a personal connection.
Videos are suitable in the preparation phase of your blended learning for:
Getting to know + bonding with the trainer
Simple entry for the participant
Especially suitable for these aspects in the preparation phase is the selfie video: You show your face and speak directly into the camera to your participant.
2nd phase in blended learning: The accompaniment
Depending on whether you plan a single presence event or several at intervals of several days or weeks, online accompaniment is particularly important. If there are several weeks between individual events, you can specifically motivate your participants with videos and maintain contact with them.
Videos are suitable in the accompaniment phase of your blended learning for:
Strengthening bonds / maintaining contact
Bringing variety and fun into the training
Presenting complex topics simply
During the online accompaniment, all three types of videos mentioned are suitable. If you care about bringing variety into your blended learning, I recommend a good mix of all three video types. Try out new formats from time to time and see for yourself how your participants respond!
3rd phase in blended learning: The follow-up
After the last presence event, online follow-up is advisable to ensure high transfer. Here too, we advise you to start with a selfie video in this phase. This way, you take your participants by the hand again and create trust and motivation for the transfer.
The video type “scene” is also suitable in the follow-up to illustrate what has been learned clearly and bridge the gap to practice.
Conclusion: We especially recommend starting each phase with a personal video to strengthen the aspect of emotional bonding in the e-learning component of your blended learning. Experiment with what works best for you.
Quality is too expensive and complicated? Not at all!
The following statement is often heard from successful trainers and coaches:
I want to appear professional and do not know if I can achieve that with self-produced videos.
A understandable concern – professional appearance is the A and O for trainers. But what does professionalism mean, especially in the context of training and coaching? We think: a professional trainer is above all authentic, transparent, and an expert in their field. The personal bond is much more valuable than a flawless performance.
At the same time, externally commissioned videos are expensive and not worth it for regular training. A “hero” video or promotional film can be advisable to present yourself and your training once. However, these videos are unsuitable for using multiple videos as support in training.
This means: You don’t need a Hollywood-style to be successful with videos in blended learning. Instead, you can achieve 80% of the quality with a maximum of 20% of the investment (time and costs). No participant evaluates a trainer negatively just because a video in training does not look 100% perfect.
Comprehensive information on shooting videos with a smartphone can be found on our info page:
Creating videos for online courses – simply with your smartphone
With a few simple tricks, you can easily create high-quality videos on your smartphone – achieving 80% quality with just 20% effort!
Checklist: What viewers really pay attention to in videos
Good sound: If I can’t understand anything, I switch off immediately!
The person behind it: Is the person sympathetic to me?
Content: Is what is presented relevant to me and plausible?
Brevity: Attention drops quickly – try to keep it to 3 minutes!
Technical playability: You can influence good software, but you cannot control a stable internet connection on the participant's side.
Regarding image quality, pronunciation, and framing, you can afford to appear a little “imperfect” – because your participants know that you are not a video journalist.
One more bonus for you: Small mistakes in self-produced videos make you appear authentic and approachable. This earns you sympathy points, which are much more important for you as a trainer or coach than perfect image quality.
You should not, however, make one mistake: recording vertical videos. Our human eyes are aligned horizontally, and that’s why our PC screens, laptops, and tablets are built in landscape mode as well. Check out this funny video:
Start now with your first video for your training
There is much to say about videos, but in the end, it’s all about trying it out yourself. Just start with a short video that you can easily record with your smartphone.
You can obtain many devices and software for video production cheaply or even for free in a demo version. Test different settings and then ask real participants (for example, from past courses) how they evaluate such a video. You will see that your participants will love your personal videos!
We at blink.it have been working intensively with clients who use videos for their training for a long time. From our experiences, we have created a guide that provides an overview of the topic of video in blended learning. From planning to actual filming to follow-up – in the guide, you will find tips, checklists, and many examples.
Start now with your first video and bring life to your blended learning!
