Why video is taking over in training

A snapshot from the interview: Watching the Human Brain Process Information

Just: Processing print isn’t something the human brain was built for. The printed word is a human artifact. It’s very convenient and it’s worked very well for us for 5,000 years, but it’s an invention of human beings.

By contrast Mother Nature has built into our brain our ability to see the visual world and interpret it. Even the spoken language is much more a given biologically than reading written language.

Ludtke: Does this mean that as we move out of the era of print and paper and into the digital era with more visual media, it’s going to be a more natural environment for humans to take in information than when it was the printed word?http://niemanreports.org/articles/watching-the-human-brain-process-information/

New learning styles and needs

For the first time in history an entire generation (named the Net generation) has grown up with everything on demand. This means there is no waiting, no down time you want to watch something, you want to know something BAM! its right there at your fingertips. and when you combine this with them being curious learners and coupled with Google and YouTube you begin to understand the changing face of the training landscape.

Now let's throw in the GFC and training budgets are slashed, staff leaving aren't replaced and everyone else is told to pick up the slack. What's one of the first budget lines to be wiped? Yep you guessed it - the training budget and the managers are told they no longer have a training team, they have to train on department level.

The perfect storm? Perhaps but also a very good reason and mixture of events for the explosion of video training and e learning

Train on demand or JIT – Just in time.

We no longer have the luxury of days of training, when I first started classroom training over 20 years ago I was running three day customer service training courses for 15 - 18 staff from one team. Can you imagine trying to get that signed off today!

Now we are in a situation of JIT - Just in time or 'What I want when I want it'. The ability to undertake this type of training is a double edge sword - On one hand you need to know what people want and when and on the other hand you need to have the capabilities or infrastructure to deliver it.

Don't think you have time to train your staff? Here's an example of how to get across a useful technique in 1 minute:

If you don't provide suitable timely training resources odds are your teams will find it for themselves and there is no guarantee what they find on the internet will be right (with YouTube being rated as the second highest search engine).

Since the GFC a lot of organisations we speak with haven't had their training budgets restored and neither has empowerment returned to a lot of managers and trainers. This means today managers and trainers need a toolbox of tricks they can use to get their staff trained quickly, cheaply and effectively.

Enter video training

ps://www.retrieve.com/blog/7-enterprise-video-statistics-that-show-video-is-the-new-company-tool

http://tubularinsights.com/increase-mobile-video-consumption/

There are many many benefits to using video to train your teams, such as:

• Consistency of the message time and time again speed to absorbing content - Some sources even suggest that visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text, 

• Micro learning bite size - Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research says a minute of video is worth 1.8 million words

• Instant ongoing refresher and coaching resource

• Recent data from the SAVO Group reveals a surprising story regarding information retention. “Just 7 days after a training session, the average employee will have forgotten 65 percent of the material covered. What’s worse — after six months that number jumps to 90 percent. However.... Presentations that include visuals like video.... become a staggering 83 percent more effective when those tests are delayed.”

Before you reach for your iphone and start that selfie video on your training topic - quality is important! Sure you can bang out a training video in ten minutes and throw it on your intranet but quality will ensure your training is used over and over again:

Learners should be able to focus on the training content and no have to worry about navigation or consistency of delivery

Whats the ROI on video?

From increased effectiveness of employee training to greatly reduced training costs, the benefits of using video during the learning and development process are well documented.

However, as a visually stimulating, multifaceted medium, video engages viewers in a way that classes and documents even PowerPoint presentations, rarely do.

Studies have shown that adding video can improve people’s ability to remember concepts and details — with effects that increase over time.  IBM has found that for traditional classroom-based training events, travel and lodging costs average upwards of 40 percent of the total event cost.

After shifting just 50% of company training to eLearning, the company has netted $579 million in savings over a two-year period.

https://www-304.ibm.com/services/learning/pdfs/IBMTraining-TheValueofTraining.pdf