After reading the second 1/3 of 25 Years in Ed Tech (Weller, 2020), many relevant chapters between 2002 and 2011 resonated with me. However, the main one that stood out to me was the use of video and e-learning.
Videos are a learning tool we have taken for granted for a long time. But, when COVID hit, learning through online videos became one of our primary sources of education. Videos are an effective way to showcase information and educate learners from many different age groups and demographics. You can learn through video in interactive, visual or auditory learning styles.
Learning via the internet and through videos is convenient for many people and their lifestyles and is an efficient and cost-effective way to learn. However, Weller (2020) states, “The arrival of e-learning, then, did not present a drastic reduction in the costs of higher education…” (p.47). In the business sector, where I have professional experience, we tend to favour e-learning because it is less expensive than in-person education. Therefore I can’t say that I completely agree with this comment. Because when videos are created, you can save money on trainers and their travel, meals and lodging expenses. Additionally, you can use videos on a global scale in place of holding conferences and hiring trainers worldwide.
Reference
Weller, M. (2020). 25 years of ed tech. Athabasca University Press. https://doi.org/10.15215/aupress/9781771993050.01
Hi Michal,
I am really interested in your comment about using videos for e-learning during the pandemic. Was your organization able to gain any data from employees regarding the effectiveness of these videos? Or, less formally, was there any ‘chat’ from employees about what they found beneficial or perhaps a bit frustrating with using videos? I created video tutorials (very basic ones!) to teach lessons during the pandemic, and I always wondered if the students found them useful. When I asked if they found the lessons helpful, most said yes, but I wonder if that was to just make me feel better 🙂
Hi Terry,
Thanks for your questions. We haven’t gained any employee data regarding the effectiveness. However, we got some feedback, some liked it and some didn’t; they still wanted face-to-face training. We got feedback that they found the videos too long, which was a lesson we learned, but we were in such a rush to create something that we didn’t thoroughly look at the big picture of what everyone needed and wanted.
We are in the process of creating new videos and breaking them out more into step-by-step and not one long video (1-3min), and so hoping to get better feedback and more employee data on that.
Michal