Introduction

Over the years, we have seen several innovations in the production and consumption of videos. These innovations have happened in both the artistic and technological aspects of videos.

Despite the innovations in video production hardware and software, video storage and distribution technologies, video consumption hardware and software, and video content itself, the video medium has chiefly served only the visual and auditory senses of learners.

Therefore, consuming videos has continued to remain a passive activity, wherein the learners just sit back and watch the videos without getting involved in the content. As a result, the level of learner engagement generated by videos has been limited.

This blog post examines a new form of video, known as interactive video, which can fix the passive nature of conventional videos.

Overview

In training, engagement is everything. Learning happens through engagement, and engagement happens through the learners' involvement in the training content.

Interactive videos involve the learners in the training content by making the content tactile in addition to visual and auditory. This is achieved by the interactive elements included in the videos using special tools, which are covered later in this blog post.

Consequently, learners no more passively view the videos, but they actively interact with the videos. There is no more one-way flow of information. It travels both ways. Due to this, learners enjoy a better learning experience and the organization benefits from better learning outcomes.  

In interactive videos, you can add different types of interactive elements, such as quizzes, hyperlinks, surveys, and polls. You can also display additional information to learners. While playing, the interactive videos will pause at predetermined positions to show the interactive elements to learners.

Features

The features of interactive videos allow learners to consume the videos in ways that were not possible in the past. Let's look at these features:

• Quizzing: In conventional training videos, there is no way to determine how much knowledge the learners have gained by watching the videos. All you can know is whether the learners have viewed the videos or not, and how long they have viewed the videos. But, in interactive videos, you can add graded quizzes to gauge the knowledge gained by the learners.
• Polls and surveys: In interactive videos, learners can immediately provide feedback on the quality of the videos, which is not possible in conventional videos. The feedback will help you quickly tweak the videos and address the feedback. The learners will appreciate your prompt actions.
• Hyperlinks: In this era of 2 minutes microlearning nuggets, you need not cram your video with information. Instead, you can create a lean video and provide hyperlinks to the nice-to-know content. So, learners will have the freedom to either go through those links immediately or park them for a later time. In addition, you can provide links to handouts and reference materials at the end of your interactive videos.
• Interactive graphics: You can include interactive graphics, such as click to reveal, drag and drop, tabs etc., to help your learners consume content by interacting with the videos.

Process

In the case of interactive videos, although the video development process does not change, the way you design, integrate, and publish the videos will change.

Also, you need to plan more development effort since you have to build the interactive content in addition to the video content.

Your video storyboard should take into consideration the content and the placement of interactive elements.

Within the video, identify the places where you want to include clickable areas, and make those areas look clickable by placing an icon. This will make the interactive areas obvious to the learners.

The rest of the video development process will be similar to that of conventional videos.

Next, you will need a software tool that can make your video interactive. Import the video into the tool, add interactive elements, and use the timeline feature to decide when the elements should appear in the video. The tool will add a layer of interactivity on your video.

Next, publish and host the video to make it available to your learners.

Tools

One of the popular tools for developing interactive videos is Adobe Captivate 2019. You can import a video into Captivate either from your computer or from YouTube.

Camtasia will also allow you to develop interactive videos. 

Articulate Storyline 360 is another option for developing interactive videos.

Conclusion

The main purpose of interactive videos is to improve the learning experience of learners.

The increase in the sources of digital distractions and the decrease in the attention span of learners poses a significant challenge to us Instructional Designers who are involved in the development of training materials.

Interactive video is one of the tools available at our disposal to make training materials engaging for learners.