Video Clinic: What’s the Right Training Video Length?

A question that comes up a lot among learning professionalsmaking digital content is, “What’s the right training video length?” Is it twominutes? Five minutes? Or even 10?

It’s not an easy question to answer because at first thought,something short like two minutes sounds about right. But as you consider it, adeclared ideal duration like two minutes doesn’t seem so clear.

Ten years ago, I ran a workshop for newspaper editors in thesouth of France on digital storytelling. At lunch, over a chilled glass of rose,two editors from France and Spain asked the very same question.

I had my own views—I was comfortable with two minutes. But Idecided to check in with a major European newspaper I had worked with abouttheir analytics.

Back then, video was viewed with media players like the RealPlayer. This newspaper’s analytics showed people closed their media players atabout one minute and fifty-one seconds.

Of course, the data only told them when the media player wasclosed. Not whether the user had watched all of it. But I was happy to concludethat keeping videos under two minutes was a good idea.

But is long video bad?

A few weeks later, at a conference in London, my new rule wasthrown on its head. The conference was about 360-degree storytelling. That’sthe term we used in the UK at the time for content across platforms andmodalities—the concept is like transmedia storytelling.

During a panel discussion, the “how long should your videobe” topic came up again. Folks from independent production companies behindsome of today’s biggest TV shows attended this conference, as well as somefolks from broadcasters like Channel Four and ITV.

During a panel discussion, one prominent producer said hedidn’t think it mattered. I disagreed. But then he showed stats of what wasthen a top rating TV show getting hundreds of thousands of online views,lasting longer than forty minutes.

These contradictory pieces of data made it tough for anyonewanting a concrete rule. Until I realized the obvious. The newspaper analyticswere for factual content. The TV statistics were for entertainment. They weredifferent. I could live with these variables.

However, the variables don’t end at genre. A few years back,YouTube published figures showing people watched video for about two minutes ontheir phones and just over four minutes on tablets.

So, genre, device, and all sorts of other variables canaffect how long people watch online video. So, what are we to do?

Key media principle—short and simple

I think aiming for short is exactly the right thing to do. However,we need to besmart about what short means because it depends on the kind of content and,for us in the learning world, it depends on the topic.

As a rule, broadcast professionals are taught to keepeverything short and simple. As a talk show host in the nineties I was alwaystold to keep my on-air interviews less than three minutes.

Talk to any newspaper journalist and they’ll tell you theirformative newsroom experience was having an editor slash their 400-word articleto 250. So, short is a traditional media discipline.

It dovetails nicely into today’s age of impatience. Peoplewant learning now, but not all of it. Only the bits that are relevant to theirimmediate needs. (This is why terms like microlearning—albeita vaguely defined and evolving term—resonates with so many people.)

So, if short is variable, how do we define it?

As short as you can make it

Having had one foot in the world of learning for the lastfew decades, and the other foot in professional media production, I humblysuggest training videos should be as short as they possibly can be. Yes, that’svague, but we can be more concrete.

Good training videos start, as does good instructionaldesign, with a clearlydefined learning objective. If you’re an instructional designer yourinstinct will be to construct the objective along the lines of Mager’sthree-part objective: action, condition, and standard.

The answer to how long is short lies in the learningobjective. The learning objective needs to be a yardstick for measuring whetherthe video is too long by asking the question of every element in the video, “DoI need this for my learner to be able to perform this task?”

Look at your script—what words can you take out withoutchanging the meaning? Look at the shots and text graphics—are they necessary? Youonly know by asking whether they help achieve the learning objective.

Good videographers critique every element of their video. Theshots, the graphics, the music, words, and the effects. And if they can’thonestly prove to themselves that an element will constructively achieve theobjective, they remove it.

Shortis about being disciplined and not cramming anything more into your videothan you need to. And the learning objective is the device you use to determineif an element makes the cut.

I suspect that someone might be thinking right now, “Did Ijust read 800 words to find this out—it’s so obvious!” And they’d be right. It’ssimple. But often the simple and obvious are overlooked.

How many training videos have you seen that are loaded withmore shots, words, and graphics than are needed to convey the message? Crammedfull of self-indulgent narrative and special effects?