My prior exposure to video learning has been limited to simple instructional how-to videos before I started to use Lynda.com video tutorials to learn design (Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign\u2026) back in 2008. I felt and still feel videos help and are effective as they demonstrate how to do things compared to only reading up instructions. Educational videos have become an important content-delivery tool in higher-education (Brame, 2016).<\/p>\n
Through one of the research assignments, I looked into digital and print reading and the science behind how our brain reads and comprehends text. That motivated me now to look into how our memory works when watching video-based tutorials, and what are the underpinning theories.\u00a0Mayer and Moreno (2003) propose the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (CTML) based on three assumptions: humans process pictorial and verbal material separately (dual-channel); each channel has limited capacity for the material that can be processed at once (limited-capacity); meaningful learning involves cognitive processing taking place in the verbal and visual channels (active-processing).<\/p>\n
I always appreciated Lynda.com and other video resources, but after a few years of teaching students, I am aware that it is not for everybody. Some people favour written instructions, paper-based or digital books, podcasts over video-based learning. Based on my research so far, there are scenarios where video curated libraries are found great for learning, such as procedural knowledge and task-oriented training (Hong, Pi, & Yang, 2018). Video-based tutorials seem to be an excellent resource for many, but not the solution to all and I feel that for higher order learning and thorough education, there should be more than just a few video tutorials.<\/p>\n