By Althea Need Kaminske

Cover Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

If you, like me, follow author, vlogger, and Indianapolis resident, John Green, you’ve heard a lot about tuberculosis (and about the many charms of my home town). Last month he released a Crash Course lecture about tuberculosis that is interesting, well-structured, and I highly recommend watching it. As I watched it, it struck me that it bears only a loose resemblance to the video lectures that I am able to produce as an instructor. Crash Course has a history of making high-quality educational videos that I am incredibly jealous of. On the spectrum of quality in educational videos, these videos fall on the high-end: well-written lectures are delivered by an engaging presenter looking directly into the camera with good lighting and clear audio, supplemented by relevant videos, graphics, and sparse and smart use of text overlays. 

Somewhere on the other end of the spectrum are the educational videos that I, and most of my colleagues, are able to put out. I look slightly to the side of the camera as I read off my slides (and hope that my Outlook notifications, dog barking, or knocks on my door don’t mess up the audio). I try my best to be engaging and deliver the lecture as I might in person - speaking naturally and passionately about the topics that interest me - but some of this is lost in the grainy video that is illuminated by the fluorescent lighting in my office. I rarely have the time, energy, or resources to add any graphics, overlays, or videos into the presentation. I’m likely recording it over lunch or in between meetings alone in my office.

There is a wide range in quality of educational videos that learners navigate. A range in quality of content, production, and relevance. Whether you’re a student watching lecture videos for class, watching videos as a supplement to your regular coursework, or a life-long learner who simply wants to learn more about the world (and tuberculosis), I want to talk about two strategies that can help you learn more from videos.

Goal Setting: Learning Versus Entertaining

First, I want to be clear that I assume the goal you have is to learn from the video rather than be entertained by the video. This is not to say that you cannot be entertained by educational videos, that entertainment should not be one of the goals of watching educational videos, or even that you can’t learn from entertaining videos. This is to say that the way you interact with a video is different if your primary goal is entertainment than if your primary goal is learning. Typically, you would sit down to watch a TED talk with different goals than if you sit down to watch a review guide for USMLE Step 1 (the United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 1 exam covers all content taught in pre-clinical years at US Medical schools. It’s a lot.). TED talks are informative, but it’s clear from the format and delivery that the primary goal is entertainment. While I’m sure there are entertaining hematology review videos, it is clear from the format and delivery that the primary goal is to deliver information. 

When you’re watching a video for entertainment you can go in without any background knowledge or work and still expect to follow along and enjoy the video. Maybe you remember an interesting idea or two from the video, maybe you don’t. You will have still felt like you understood and, hopefully, enjoyed the video. When you’re watching a video for education you should have a much clearer idea of what you’re watching and why; your ability to follow along and enjoy the video is very dependent on your level of background knowledge. Your expectation is that you will remember more than just a random fact or two - it is that your understanding of a concept will be deepened or expanded in some quantifiable way. Framed this way, one of the biggest differences between the goal of entertainment and the goal of learning is intentionality.

If you are intentional about setting goals for your viewing experience, research suggests that goal-setting can be an incentive to improve your learning (1). When you set a specific goal you tend to direct your attention towards goal-relevant information (instead of goal-irrelevant information), compare your results with your goal, and adjust and modify your engagement as a result (1). For example, pretend you’re going to watch that video about tuberculosis. One perfectly valid way to watch the video is with the simple goal of learning something interesting - to be entertained and hopefully remember an interesting idea or two. Another would be to ask some specific questions before watching it: Why is an old-timey disease like tuberculosis relevant today? Isn’t there a cure? If so, why don’t some people have access to that cure? You would probably still enjoy the video either way, but if you’ve set some potential learning goals you might find yourself paying attention to different types of information and assessing your ability to answer those questions as you move throughout the video.

Advance Organizers

Advance organizers are essentially any tool that helps you organize your knowledge in advance of a learning opportunity. A study by Pi et al. (2023) looked specifically at the use of outlines as advance organizers for an educational video (2). Prior to watching an educational video about blood platelets and hemostasis, learners were either given an instructor-generated outline of the video only or given an instructor-generated outline and asked to write down key points from that outline. A third control group watched the video without an outline. All groups had their eye movements recorded while watching the video and completed an engagement questionnaire and learning performance test after viewing the video. Thus, we can look at self-reported and eye-tracking measures of engagement as well as learning performance across the three groups.

Self-reported levels of engagement were higher in both of the outline groups compared to the control. However, only the instructor-generated outline group was significantly higher than the control group. There was no statistical difference in self-reported engagement between the instructor-generated outline and the instructor-generated + learner generated outline group. As long as there was an outline, learners tended to feel more engaged with the video.

Interestingly, the eye-tracking results show a slightly different story. The eye-tracking results measured the percentage of dwell time in the area of interest (AOI). From this researcher can infer how learners are directing their attention. If learners are looking longer at the AOI, then that indicates greater attention. Unlike the self-reported questionnaire, the instructor-generated + learner generated outline group had significantly higher dwell times than the control group. Learners who made their own summary of the outline paid more attention to relevant areas of the video than those who had no outline provided to them. However, there was no statistical difference between the instructor-generated outline group and the instructor-generated + learner-generated group. 

Finally, learners in both outline groups scored higher on the learning performance test than the control group, but only the instructor-generated + learner-generated outline was statistically significant. Learners who made their own summary of the outline learned more than learned who watched the video with no outline.

I found it really interesting that both the eye-tracking and learning performance data showed a clear advantage for the learner-generated outline, but that the self-reported measure of engagement did not. We know from research on metacognition that often our feelings about our learning don’t always line up with measures of our learning. The researchers interviewed the learners about their experience after completing all of the measures I described above. In the instructor-generated outline group the majority of participants felt it helped (86%) and reported that it a) made learning goals clear, b) helped them select what to focus on, and c) encouraged them to engage more. Of those that did not think it was beneficial (14%), they reported that it was because the video was short and they weren’t used to using the outline. In the instructor-generated + learner-generated group a smaller majority (68%) thought that writing down the key points helped. Of those who felt it did not help (32%), they reported that it essentially stressed them out. “They held the view that writing down the key points of the lecture could make them too focused on the learning outcome, and they felt frustrated and anxious if they could not catch the key points while watching the video” (Pi et al., 2023, pg 3505). This suggests to me that this strategy, though effective, may take some practice for learners to feel comfortable with. 

I wonder if some of this tension around focusing too much on learning outcomes comes from different goals about watching videos. Creating specific, intentional goals takes a little bit of the fun out of watching a video and puts in a little bit more work. I also wonder if the anxiety about missing key points while watching the video would be reduced by either a) having the ability to stop or rewatch portions of the video or b) practice with the strategy so that learners can see the improvement in memory and learning from videos when they use this strategy (i.e., “I may not catch everything, but I certainly remember more when I do this than when I don’t.”). 

Bottom Line

A clear practical recommendation that follows from the Pi et al. (2023) study is to obtain and summarize an outline of a video before watching it (2). Here, finally, is an area where many instructor-made educational videos shine. If you are watching a video made for a class it is likely that the instructor has a set of learning objectives for that video. If they are talking over a PowerPoint, these are probably on some of the very first slides. The learning objectives can serve as an outline of the content to be covered. You should review that and probably write down a few key points.

However, not all educational videos will be organized this way. Sometimes all you will have to go on might be the video description or the simply the title of the video itself. If there is a video description it may include a narrative description of the video, in which case it can serve as a narrative advance organizer. You can still read through it and write down what you feel may be key points of the video. If you find yourself watching a video with a title only - no summary slide of learning objectives or content outline, no narrative description - then summarizing becomes much more challenging. Outlines as advance organizers are useful because they give you a preview of the structure of the video - allowing you to adjust your attention more effectively throughout - and help activate prior knowledge (3) - allowing you to integrate new information into the framework of what you already know. Without additional information the structure of the video may be a surprise, but you can still generate a few ideas of what will be covered in a video based on your prior knowledge.

Once you have an understanding of what to expect from the video, you should set a goal. I think it’s important to note that your goal may be different than your outline of the video content. You may note some key points on the outline and realize that your goal is to understand only a few of those concepts. Alternatively, you may already be familiar with many of the concepts on the outline, and your goal is to better understand this particular presenter’s point of view. You may even return to a video you have seen before and have different goals on the second viewing than you did on the first. 

So, the next time you watch a video with the goal of learning, I hope you take a few minutes to outline and set some learning goals. You’ll pay more attention to goal-relevant information and remember more!

References:

1. Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey, American Psychologist, 57(9), 705-717. https://doi.org/1037/003-066X.57.9.705

2. Pi, Z., Zhang, Y., Xu, K., & Yang, J. (2023). Does an outline of contents promote lecture learning from videos? A study on learning performance and engagement. Education and Information Technologies, 28, 3493-3511. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-1131-5

3. Ausubel, D. P. (1960). The use of advance organizers in the learning and retention of meaningful verbal material. Journal of Educational Psychology, 51(5), 267-272. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0046669