7 Tips For Creating Corporate eLearning Course Videos

Harold Aguirre
Videomaker
Published in
4 min readMay 19, 2016

Corporate employee training courses have evolved from the boring video companies would make their employees watch to the monotone PowerPoint slideshow to today’s interactive eLearning courses. Currently, workers do not need to leave their chair to be updated on company protocol or learn about the company’s latest products. They just sign into their eLearning course account and proceed with the course. If they do not have time to finish the course, they can log off and continue later. This decreases employee downtime and increases productivity.

From a pedagogical viewpoint video is a great resource, thus corporate eLearning development teams have made use of it. Corporations now understand that the quality of their eLearning training courses can accelerate or impede a learner’s progress.

Preparation is the most basic aspect to producing a great eLearning video. The more attention to detail in the planning stage, the better your video will be. Many believe that by having a great script you will be able to produce a great video, but there are other factors you should be aware of.

Here are seven tips to consider:

1. Create an outline of your video content.

Start to prepare for your eLearning video production by outlining, in a detailed manner, what you want to include in your video. What didactic activities are you going to include? What visual content you will utilize in order to convey the lesson’s message clearly. A good outline will give you more of an understanding as to what the project will require: how long will the video be, and how much time and money will need to be invested. Hence, you can study the outline and come up with different ways to improve the project — in other words, reduce costs and make the video more compelling.

2. Make your video appropriate to the material.

Ascertaining goals for your learners is the best way to assure the video remains relevant to the course subject. It is important to communicate the exact information you want the learner to retain. If the video is very engaging, but the learner is not absorbing important information, then your video is useless to the course. This is why corporations have learning management teams, that aid in the creation of eLearning course material. You and the team should come up with different ways to include course information without forfeiting learner engagement or knowledge acquisition.

3. Use good equipment.

It goes without saying that having good, dependable equipment is crucial for creating a high quality corporate eLearning course video. The equipment that you decide to invest in should support recording in a variety of environments and situations — in/outdoors, in a studio, or in the field. At minimum, we recommend investing in a good camera, a tripod with a fluid head for smoother tilting and panning, lighting, microphones, and a green screen. Green screen lighting can be tricky, so be sure to read Green Screen Lighting Mistakes and How to Fix Them.

Most eLearning authoring software integrates with the popular video extensions, however, course maintenance and editing can get complicated and expensive for departments with multiple course developers and software packages. Standardizing software and templates will save considerable time and money.

4. Interactive = Engaging

A good way to ensure that your learners stay attentive is by making your video interactive. If you make the learners participation a requirement in the video, they will be engaged and alert throughout the video. Something I’ve used with great success is creating reflective pauses in the video. This is where the learner is prompted to think about about what he/she just saw and come up with his own opinion. Questions that spark critical thinking are always a great way to reinforce newly acquired knowledge. There are countless ways that you can take advantage of these pauses to make the audience think; it all depends on your creativity.

5. Scripts for voice overs and narrations

Using easy to understand language helps to not confuse the learner. Technical terms that are not specific to your learners field should be avoided. After creating a script, it is a good idea to read it out loud to make sure it sounds good and is easy to understand. Always remember that your video should contain relevant, engaging and interactive material that goes along with your outline objectives.

6. Watch out for redundancies

Something that I had to adjust in my early years as an eLearning developer was repetition in my courses and videos. Saying the same thing over and over again is something that happens almost unconsciously. Therefore, make sure to revise every video script to avoid unconscious redundancy.

7. Real Actors

Some companies may want to cut cost by asking employees to star in their eLearning videos; I recommend you don’t. Using professional actors will assure that your video is taken seriously and that recording will meet the deadline.

The correct use of videos in your eLearning courses will improve the way your audience learns. A good video will engage and communicate information no matter how complex the subject is. Keeping these 7 tips in mind can be the key to the creation of a high quality eLearning video that your learners will appreciate and comprehend easily.

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Harold Aguirre
Videomaker

Harold Aguirre has worked in the elearning development field for over 5 years. See more of his writing on www.elearning.net