When I first began my exploration of the TED-Ed modality, I asked myself (and my peers), was there a method to the madness? This was my initial broad question to the refined topic of instructional design methodology and its relation (if any) within video-based learning. I had great intentions of researching everything there was to know about design related elements like video length, audio, text elements, and instructional design processes when I quickly realized (with the help of some feedback) that I needed to narrow my scope and remain focused on the elements related to instructional design over anything else.
It took me until well into my research for the light bulb to finally go off and realize that I was looking for something that I wouldn’t quite find. I was expecting the research to tell me what design process was best or most commonly used for video-based learning. I was feverishly searching for correlations to ADDIE (I know I know… it’s not overly relevant), project phases, or something that was structured and clearly laid out as the recommended approach to use when designing video-based learning content. It wasn’t until I started to look back and call upon some of the key learnings from our previous courses related to empathic design, learning theories, and design thinking processes that I started to frame the concept of instructional design methodology and how it relates to video-based learning. Through the TED-Ed modality, there were many correlations with learning theories and how there was clear evidence demonstrating how they were considering through each aspect of the content design. So before I go over the word count here, there really is no “method” to the madness per say, but there is definitely pedagogical consideration through the development of TED-Ed video-based learning content.