Planning your video

To ensure that  your video will meet your learner's needs you need to understand your audience. Ask yourself these five questions when you start planning your videos to help give some structure to your video:

• What is your topic? Try to stick to just one topic per video to reduce cognitive load.
• Who is your audience? Understanding the demographics, and particularly their existing knowledge, can help determine the scope of your video,
• Why does your audience care about this topic? Understanding how the content in your video applies to the lives of your students is key to understanding how to engage them with the content.
• What is the learning objective of your video? A clear learning objective helps guide you when creating your video but also informs students of exactly what they should be getting out of the video.
• How will your video benefit your audience? What skills or knowledge will students get from watching your video?

Creating a storyboard and a script are useful ways of organising your content to decide how you want your video to flow. A storyboard is a visual representation of a video, helping you to plot out what visuals you need to capture, including what's on screen and what type of shot each scene will be. Your script is your audio: what will be said and what sounds and music you might include.

• You can start with a script or a storyboard, but a script is usually an easier starting point and the process of writing one can help you organise your thoughts. 
• Use the AAAA formula to write your script. This stands for Attention (grab their attention in the first line), Agitation (Agitate the pain that you can solve with your video), Activity (show them how to solve it) and Action (Call them to action and tell them how to get the solution). 
• Read your script aloud to make sure that it flows. Sometimes what works in written form doesn't sound right when spoken out loud, so make sure to read it (preferably with someone else) to make sure everything flows.
• Once you have your script, you can break it down into scenes, and break those scenes down into shots, which will become your storyboard.
• You can create your storyboard using a number of tools, including online apps, but a pen and paper works just as well. 
• You don't have to be able to draw to create a storyboard. Your storyboard is all about conveying what visuals will be on your screen, so stick figures are perfect. You just need to know what's on screen, how they're framed, and any movement your subject or the camera will be making. 
• There are a number of storyboard templates freely available online. You can find a selection of them here: Storyboard Templates

When structuring your video you need to take into account the cognitive load of your video. This is informed by the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (Mayer, 2009). The cognitive theory of multimedia learning states that we process information through either visuals (words and pictures) or through listening (audio), that we have very limited capacity for holding short term information in our working memory and that learning is an active process of filtering, selecting, organising and integrating information (as show in the diagram below).

Source: Columbia University Center for Teaching and Learning

Mayer suggests a number of principles to apply in the structure of your multimedia instruction to improve student learning. They are:

Coherence principle – limit extraneous content. If your video has too much sensory input you're at risk of creating cognitive overload in your students. Keep your content simple, limiting your words and visual elements to only what is strictly necessary to achieve learning.

Segmenting principle – break down the content in your video. Learning is better when content is presented in learner-paced segments. Keep your videos on the short side wherever possible to reduce student fatigue and "chunk" out information.

Contiguity principle – coordinate corresponding content. Learning is better when related words and pictures are presented near rather than far from each other on the screen (spatial contiguity) and when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously (temporal contiguity). For example, place printed words near corresponding parts of graphics to reduce need for visual scanning.

Signaling principle – provide cues for how to process the material. Treat your learning like a map and signal to your students where their attention should be directed. Signal verbal material using an outline, headings, highlighting, and use signalling words (such as first, second, third on your slides. Signal visual material with arrows, flashing, spotlighting, and other annotations.