Five ways to increase the effectiveness of instructional video

This paper reviews five ways to increase the effectiveness of instructional video and one way not to use instructional video. People learn better from an instructional video when the onscreen instructor draws graphics on the board while lecturing (dynamic drawing principle), the onscreen instructor shifts eye gaze between the audience and the board while lecturing (gaze guidance principle), the lesson contains prompts to engage in summarizing or explaining the material (generative activity principle), a demonstration is filmed from a first-person perspective (perspective principle), or subtitles are added to a narrated video that contains speech in the learner's second language (subtitle principle). People do not learn better from a multimedia lesson when interesting but extraneous video is added (seductive details principle). Additional work is needed to determine the conditions under which these principles apply and the underlying learning mechanisms.