I’ve not dug deep in the research literature either. A quick google search gave me this 2021 meta-analysis: Video Improves Learning in Higher Education: A Systematic Review. From the abstract: “Swapping video for existing teaching methods led to small improvements in student learning (g = 0.28). Adding video to existing teaching led to strong learning benefits (g = 0.80).”
(Huh, that’s better than I expected, apparently videos are already now very useful.)
When thinking of the arguments on “people respond differently to videos”, videos also have some points in favor of them: Videos can actually be quite captivating (there’s undeniably a lot of variance in both teachers and videos), you can insert visual cues to guide attention, it’s easier to iterate to alleviate these issues, …
Stronger effect size than I would have expected also! But unsurprising that the effect size would be much larger when video is added to existing teaching; it seems like that could give you the best of both.
But yeah, absent further info or a closer look at the literature, your argument seems more plausible to me than it did before your comment. Thanks!
I’ve not dug deep in the research literature either. A quick google search gave me this 2021 meta-analysis: Video Improves Learning in Higher Education: A Systematic Review. From the abstract: “Swapping video for existing teaching methods led to small improvements in student learning (g = 0.28). Adding video to existing teaching led to strong learning benefits (g = 0.80).”
(Huh, that’s better than I expected, apparently videos are already now very useful.)
When thinking of the arguments on “people respond differently to videos”, videos also have some points in favor of them: Videos can actually be quite captivating (there’s undeniably a lot of variance in both teachers and videos), you can insert visual cues to guide attention, it’s easier to iterate to alleviate these issues, …
Stronger effect size than I would have expected also! But unsurprising that the effect size would be much larger when video is added to existing teaching; it seems like that could give you the best of both.
But yeah, absent further info or a closer look at the literature, your argument seems more plausible to me than it did before your comment. Thanks!