I was scrolling through LinkedIn today and noticed a video about ‘how long it takes to make a first impression’. The tag caught me. I watched the first ten seconds as the presenter stood in a generic skirt suit with a generic office background in an overly produced and well-lit manner. She reeled off a series of numbers. “Ten seconds? Five seconds? Two seconds? Whatever your answer, you’re right!”. She lost me. There was something completely non-genuine about the way in which she was presenting. It felt like a million other ‘professional development’ videos I had seen, so I moved along. I didn’t feel like she was going to be able to teach me anything or that I would get anything out of continuing to watch.
The second video I encountered got me instantly. It was a group of people in what looked like a sports team, out in the field. One of the people turned around and started walking towards the camera naturally. The shot moved into slow motion as she got closer, and text started to flash up on the screen introducing her. She was a leader, had received an award and was being applauded as someone who stood out in her field (pardon the pun). The visual was saying ‘standing out in the field’ and the message was just that. It wasn’t overly produced. It seemed natural and the people in it were real.
We have such limited time nowadays to capture end-users. There is the assumption that as each generation comes through and technology continues to dominate from a young age, attention spans are reducing. Whilst I don’t have scientific evidence of this, having witnessed how long ‘memes’ and ‘TikTok’ videos run for it’s assumed that by the time kids currently in primary school reach adult learner status their ability to focus for longer than the current cohort of gen-x, y or z is going to be significantly less one would assume.
So how, as education designers and developers, do we create online learning that can capture and hold end users? In short, bursts, using multimedia, variations of format, interactivity. Consider what you do for entertainment, what your kids might do for entertainment, what your kids’ kids might do for entertainment. Do you sit through 2-hour-long movies paying attention to every single moment?
Let’s look at two different lengthy films to investigate this. The last Marvel Avengers movie putting the full stop on a 10+ year sentence ran longer than 3 hours. Kids of all ages ate it up. The film moved from action scene to action scene and provided answers to long-standing questions. To me (a fan) it certainly didn’t feel like 3 hours and I can tell you it certainly didn’t feel like 3 hours to my son or others in the cinema with us.
When compared with Christopher Nolan’s latest film, Tenet (which runs 2.5 hours), the likelihood of being able to hold the full attention of the audience throughout every moment is considerably less, given how intense the action and jarring the necessary exposition scenes were. The 2.5 hours is thick, heavy and fast. To prove a point, my husband asked me if I remembered any of the characters’ names after the film finished. I couldn’t! I thoroughly enjoyed the film, but my brain hurt. I felt like I had just sat through a cram session in preparation for writing a Uni essay. I felt like I had been reading heavy documents full of details I knew I wouldn’t remember.
Let’s look at aligning online learning and holding attention to these two films and their audiences. If Tenet were an online course it would be full of content in text form, interspersed with the occasional knowledge check activity and lots of heavy reading to keep up. Imagine that feeling you get when you see a presenter flip pages on a PowerPoint that has too much text on it, and they read it aloud word for word. You have to pay constant attention to pull out and retain the information required to pass the course. It’s hard work if you’re not a big reader, and hard work if you aren’t used to learning this way. Just as I’d say to anyone Tenet is great, but it’s a hard work film. If you’re used to watching YouTube meme compilations (about 10-minute videos made of 10-30 second clips), Tenet will be hard work.
If we try to design learning more like End Game, we are effectively creating a course of meme-worthy scenes interspersed with action and emotionally engaging content. Think outside the box. Tell a story with your course. Have a central character the end-user walks alongside throughout it. Things happen to this character that demonstrates real-world events that can occur in the workplace related to the course. Break it into smaller pieces. Create a quick video using still images, animations or if you have the budget real people. Use the approach of seeking to use a tiny portion of time to engage. Like the LinkedIn videos I saw, don’t just stick a presenter up there in a suit speaking jargon. Use real people. Use slow motion. Use emotion. Tell a story with what time you have, then get the user engaged in an activity where they can learn more and discover at their own pace. Let them engage with their classmates in a discussion.
Even more than watching End Game or Tenet, we are more likely to capture our audience with something more akin to that 10 minute YouTube meme compilation. Short. Punchy. Entertaining. Consider creating an episode of Happy Days rather than an episode of Game of Thrones (as awesome as that is), speaking from the length of time and attention level required.
Provide a bento box instead of a medieval-style feast. Simple, clean, engaging, entertaining.
Photo by Xavi Cabrera on Unsplash
