Avant-garde! Is Your eLearning Video Ahead of the Crowd?

The avant-garde in eLearning video? What is it? Are thewords avant-garde and eLearning even allowed in the same sentence?

An official definition (fromWikipedia): Avant-garde (from French, “advance guard” or “vanguard”)refers to “people or works (of art) that are experimental or innovative,particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics.”

In the early-to-mid-20^th century, avant-garde wasa movement and a phrase that referred to artists who were breaking new ground. Artistswere consciously part of the avant-garde. Picasso, Magritte, Dali, Braque, andDuchamp among others were considered avant-garde. Is avant-garde just a phraseabout the titans of art, or can it really be relevant to eLearning?

What does avant-garde have to do with eLearning?

eLearning design and development is undoubtedly part of our culture, so it seemsto me the idea can fit. Let’s see how—and why.

If “avant-garde” means “innovative” or “ahead of the crowd,” then in thatsense its use in eLearning can be appropriate. Avant-garde in eLearning videomight include presentations intended to shake things up—to break anchors thatlearners have to ideas and procedures, or to stimulate thought about a topic(and to stimulate discussion in the case of synchronous or social learning.) Furthermore,we need to understand how the break from didactic-mode video, e.g. a talking-headlecture or lecturette, or the move to video using different creative modes canwork to support learning. Here are some examples:

• Photeo animation, or “The Ken Burns Effect” can evoke emotion, engage learners, orspark an “ah-ha!” moment.
• Interactive video can incorporate learninginteractions as objects, such as buttons or links, within a video, or provideopportunities to make decisions and see the outcomes (coming soon to a touch screen near you).
• Stop-motion and time-lapse videos can explain concepts.
• Stop-motion and time lapse video can demonstrate assembly of a device or construction (here’s how they didthat).
• Vine or Instagram can demonstrate something in only a fewseconds in a way that allows the learner to repeat, slow down or stop thedemonstration, or support learner-created video.

All of these grow out of and extendthe value of video: to convey synchronized visual and aural information tolearners, to show processes or sequences, or to show how to do something or howsomething works when a series of still photos doesn’t adequately support developmentof skill or understanding.

Why is the concept of avant-garde important to eLearning and how we mightuse this concept to our advantage? The only way to truly judge the quality ofthe eLearning we create is how well our learning audience remembers, and not juston their evaluations. What’s even more important is how well learners retainwhat we’ve created after six months. How do we make our eLearning videosrelevant in an increasingly complex world of media?

All sorts and qualities of visual media surround us every day. The video wesee (even on networks like CNN) ranges from video shot the wrong way with aphone (vertically) or is very shaky, all the way to highly refined. And the subjectmatter is usually cats (just kidding).

One way to make our video relevant is to make sure you’re working at creatingsomething different. That doesn’t mean standing on your head or making a videothat draws attention to itself. It does mean that you’re willing to attempt tothink and work outside the box. You won’t always be successful. Nobody ever is.Avant-garde should shake up viewpoints or expectations, be surprising, and mostimportantly, be memorable. And that fits the definition of avant-garde.

Here is an example of what we think avant-garde can look like in a trainingvideo. It’s a corporate/public training video that many of you have seen: VirginAmerica’s passenger safety presentation. Delta may have led the way when theyfirst created their attention getting video about five yearsago, but Virgin did them more than one better. When Delta created their safetyvideo, it was avant-garde because nobody had done a passenger safety video thisway before. Virgin ups the ante in an exciting way and throws down the gauntletfor other airlines. And what is an airline safety video, if it’s not training?Mandatory passenger training.

(Used with permission of VirginAmerica)

eLearning pushes boundaries every day, whether we know it ornot. All of us are coming up with new ideas every day to use this new deliverymethod. Some are good and some are not, but we’re all pushing the boundaries ofwhat we can do. So let’s push it some more.

Another thought: Why does eLearning video have to teach somethingabout a subject? More and more, I’ve seen and have been working on video thatrelates to the topic that’s going to be taught, but not the training itself.

Here’s an example of a video that doesn’t teach a topic perse; it’s an animation and its intent is to inspire the learners to payattention in class. Every learning audience is different. In this case, theaudience was primarily 25- to 35-year-old men who were learning to installinsulation in homes and manufactured housing. They all had high school diplomasor GEDs, but were not great students. How do we inspire these men and get themto pay attention in class and study their online and live training? Here’s whatwe did:

The objective was met. The learners were quoting the end ofall these videos in the series in their classes. Is it avant-garde? Itcertainly was a new idea or at least a fresh execution of an already existingidea. And it worked. And that is the gist of this idea of avant-garde—eLearningshould never bore. Boring is not allowed.

Test pilots talk about pushing the envelope. When they do, they’rereferring to the performance of their aircraft. When I think about pushing theboundaries of the eLearning envelope I’m thinking about how we can continue tomotivate people who want to or need to learn. The people who design and developthis media are people who don’t want to leave things at the status quo… the waythings already are. And that’s what good teaching is about. Not sticking withthe status quo. And that’s what the avant-garde-in-eLearning video is about aswell: pushing the boundaries of how we’re using the medium to engage ourlearners and make what we do memorable. Make no mistake: Commercial TV is our competition.