Educational Videos to Inspire Your Creations - Part 1

PBS Television has been laying the groundwork for today’s educational videos for half a century, so it’s no surprise that their YouTube channels are masterclasses in simple but effective, bite-sized teaching. PBS Eons explores a wide range of topics about prehistoric life and geology and how those forces shaped our modern world.

Stylistic Takeaways

• Effective “b-roll”: B-roll is supplemental footage that maintains viewer attention by adding visual variety (in contrast to footage of the presenter, i.e. “a-roll”). The b-roll here is simple—usually static images, sometimes with mild annotations—but relevant, even when it’s not adding new information. Notice how they repeatedly switch between b-roll and a-roll before the viewer has an opportunity to get bored.
• “Picture-in-picture”: Sometimes we see the presenter standing next to their slides or b-roll, both pictures visible simultaneously (a technique most prominent today in “late night” talk shows). This is a great way to add visual information to keep your students engaged and can save you a lot of time in editing: if we screen record our slide deck and click through it while recording ourselves, we can simply overlay the two time-synched video files and save time deciding when to switch back and forth.
• Content > form: The video’s understated filmmaking style fades into the background as the fascinating information takes center stage, greatly aided by the simple language and joyful passion of the presenter.
• Captivating opening: The opening, or “hook,” employs a popular misconception to show viewers that they have much more to learn about this subject than they might have thought, pulling them into a short lecture as if it were a mystery. While our students might be required to watch our videos for a grade, a little suspense can make them feel compelled to do so regardless.

Another stellar PBS offering, Otherwords, gives short linguistic lessons taught by a PhD sociolinguist, answering bizarre questions about our use of language that we take for granted. 

Stylistic Takeaways

• Supporting case studies and examples: The old storytelling adage to “show, don’t tell” can help students internalize lessons beyond rote memorization. The frequent examples/case studies here meaningfully substantiate the thesis to the audience; we don’t have to believe them on expertise alone, but find ourselves grinning as they convincingly demonstrate—nearly prove—etymologies we’d never considered.
• Humor: As we’ll see in many of these videos, a little humor goes a long way in keeping dense information digestible.
• Keywords and definitions: When introducing a crucial term, we see it—sometimes accompanied by its definition—written on screen, picture-in-picture next to the presenter. This approach harnesses dual coding, the cognitive benefits of combining verbal and visual information. The video’s animations further reinforce key terms, keeping attention focused on the most salient ideas.
• Story structure: This video is a perfect example of the hook-context-developement-climax story structure we teach in our IDEAS script writing workshops for UMass instructors: we start with a question; then learn some concrete, grounded information; then zoom out big-picture to the implications of the building blocks of info we’ve been given. 

There’s no consensus on which creator laid the groundwork for today’s video essay format, but, for me, Vsauce is the essential trailblazer. I would not be an educational communicator had I never discovered it. Its earlier videos, including this one, answer simple, multidisciplinary questions in complex ways. They combine—or “interleave”—knowledge from different domains, a practice shown to improve learning.

This video’s loose, stream-of-consciousness structure is engaging, but it does not emphasize a single thesis as strongly as we typically aim to in formal instruction. I would caution against straying quite this far from a defined learning objective. Vsauce’s more recent videos are even less linear, but for those drawn to this style, they offer profound, almost psychedelic, explorations unlike anything else online.

Stylistic Takeaways

• Bolded keywords: Vsauce uses bolded keywords alone to focus attention on a single academic term, allowing the presenter to explain its meaning and relevance without the viewer being able to skim ahead. The context and complexity of your term should dictate whether or not you visually include the definition—a skill I assume everyone reading this already intuitively understands while crafting slide presentations.
• Visual variety: While we mostly see the presenter, subtle shifts to b-roll and simple animations keep the pacing brisk and dynamic.
• Personal narrative: The presenter illuminates some personal context to create an emotional draw and remind us that a fellow human cares about this information on the other side of a screen, causing us to empathetically mirror his interest. We’ll see much more about personal narratives in part two of this article series.