May Chen and Daniel Brooks published their course archive in July and found 43 slide decks that required video treatment. The shooting began in the fall after six weeks with two-man crew and no budget. They thought it was an easy choice to record every lecturer and then to have the recordings accessible.
One Professor then altered 9 slides in one of the core modules. One asked for it to be provided in the Spanish language. A third, desired reduction in lesson-length for students doing review before exams.
The team now has a restriction on the choice of the quickest method for making a video. They were deciding what they will be updating next term that will be easiest. If you have numerous courses in your library, and are part of a course team, this impact is significant. Here, we will compare with them based on the material they are the best at.
Price the Second Version Before You Produce the First
Often, budgeting is done for the initial release because this is the cost that is readily apparent. However, a change in policy might call for new footage or some careful editing. Although the template project may be tidied up, someone will need to open the timeline when there are 3 slides. Document-based workflows keep revisions in association with the source documents.
Before choosing a method, ask four practical questions:
- What is the material already in the form of?
- How often will the instructors update it?
- Is there a need for a real person or live screen for the lesson?
- Will there be a need for new language versions of the course later?
Those answers typically cut the list down quicker than a feature list. One-shot guest lectures should not be treated as a mandatory course that is offered each semester. One may not need an edit ever again.
Lecture Capture Works When the Instructor Is the Lesson
Traditional lecture recording is still helpful, as well as preserving the actual delivery of the instructor. It is important in subjects where personality, pacing or some spontaneous explanation is a part of the lesson. Lecture capture is also fairly light work for an instructor who is familiar with the content. Record, perform simple editing and publish. The weakness lies in the reusable courseware, that is, when the recording is used for teaching purposes.
Let’s take a 70-minute economics lecture, and say that a regulation is changing next year, that is, six minutes of the 70 lecture. The rest is right. The team will now need to edit around the old passage or record a new one. That’s a maintenance task across 20 modules.
Lecture capture is best when:
- The presence of the teacher is a real factor in education.
- The session has a link to an event/term.
- There will be limited updates.
- What matters more is natural classroom delivery rather than re-use of the modules.
Screen Recording Wins When Students Need to See the Interface
For some lessons it is not possible to teach well with slides and narration only. Students have to observe the task being performed. A computer programming teacher might have to fix a program on the computer. If this is the case, then the simple way is screen recording.
Camtasiais a screen capture and video editing software, and works well for interface-based teaching. The value is simple; learners are shown what they will be doing on the screen.
Still, there’s need for attention to maintenance. Old footage can appear incorrect due to interface modifications even though the lesson concept is correct. There’s no screen recorder in Leadde, software demonstrations require another tool.
Template Editors Trade Speed for Fine Control
Teams that are concerned about the exact visual presentation will welcome template-based editors. They provide some control over typography, graphics, brand treatment, and scene timing and layouts. For courses that are the flagship of a school, that control may be worthwhile. A designer is able to create a coherent visual system.
The expense will be reflected in ownership. There has to be somebody that understands the project file. Two man operation of the course may have difficulty. The most logical use of template editing is when there is a visual treatment included in the product. It does not make quite as much sense if the principal aim is to maintain factual information up-to-date. Course teams should also inquire about who will be the file-owner for next year.
Document-to-Video Fits Courses That Already Live in Documents
Many course teams don’t have a blank page. They have already developed their curriculum in PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, word documents or notes. Teams need not recreate the lesson, starting from the ground up, but rather can start with the material that instructors already have. An AI lecture video maker is suitable for this situation, as the source document is used as the starting point.
Leadde’s AI Video Creator supports .pptx, .pdf, .doc, .docx and .txt files with a maximum size of 500 MB. It reads the material, plans the video, composes outline and script and produces the video. The team can plan the source first, and see how the team converted the material into scenes.
Leadde offers over 200 pre-made avatars as well as 88 languages and 175 dialects. Those options are important in the case of teaching the same lesson to multiple geographies. Narrative Style alters the context of the content. Explanation with audience in mind for the intended viewer. Training Objective provides a more apparent learning goal for the process of generation.
There are no settings that correct substandard source material. An under-structured document still provides less structure to the system. Completion rate reporting provides teams with a view to see if viewers complete a lesson. This can reveal another issue than production quality.
For example, if a module lasts 18 minutes, but is very well made, half of the viewers may drop out in the middle. That suggests the course team should consider the lesson design and not just the images of the lesson.
Document Based Creation is particularly appropriate when:
- The approved material is available in the form of files.
- Those files are periodically updated by instructors.
- Multiple language versions will be available.
- The team is looking for a uniform performance of a number of modules.
Not as convincing if the lesson relies on the improvisation or demonstration.
AI Presenters and LMS Recorders Solve Different Shortcuts
AI presenter platforms go about it in another way. They assist teams in making presenter-led video, without having to book a human recording session. This includes Synthesia. It is most useful when consistency of the presenter is important throughout a training or an education library.
There’s a different starting point for a document-first workflow. It begins with the knowledge source that is already in place, and transforms this source to the video structure. Although that’s a small difference, it does have an impact on how a team plans their production.
The course may have approved documents and maintaining that relationship may be most important. When the course begins with the scripts, presenter choice may be more important.
The third shortcut comes in the form of built-in LMS recorders. They can be convenient as teachers are already in the learning area. The limitation is scope. A lesson is recorded with a recorder and revision strategy and localization are still two different tasks.
A good rule of thumb is to link the technique to the most difficult aspect of the task:
- The asset is live teaching: record the teacher.
- The lesson is screen actions: capture the screen.
- Visual design is the product: use an editor.
- Start with existing documents: document-to-video.
- Consistency is key with the presenter: consider about a AI presenter platform.
This prevents teams from selecting technology prior to determining the production problem that needs to be addressed.
Where the Document-to-Video Route Falls Short
The first one is software training. Record the screen when the student should be seeing the cursor moving around in an application. That is not something that is offered by Leadde. Physical technique is another limit. The actual video may be needed for a laboratory procedure or demonstration in a chemistry lab. The student must observe the movement, set up or safety action. Presence of the instructor can also be a factor.
Trust, discussion, or personality of teacher is required for some lessons. This can lead to a lessened experience when the person is substituted with an avatar. Leadde is predominantly a desktop application with a focus on Chrome/Chromium browsers. The platform can be accessed via tablet or mobile device; but some features are limited. There are some restrictions with Safari and Edge as well.
For Maya and Daniel, it’d be wise to not take the plunge and jump all 43 decks at once. Select a module with a clearly defined set of source documents where one revision is likely to be expected in the module in the coming semester. Develop a lesson that incorporates the method you’ve considered.
Then test again and find out how much work the second version really needs. How much work will have to be done on the second version?
