The scientific basis for video production

When it comes to using video as a learning object, there are many different aspects, besides the purely academic, that we must take into account. Pedagogical and didactic elements are important when it comes to the material to be presented. Furthermore, cinematic considerations must be taken into account in the presentation itself, but we must also attend to various psychological, neurological and cognition-related aspects.

In this context, we must focus on what is important academically (subjects, pedagogy and didactics), while at the same time ensuring that students can absorb this in the best possible way (psychology and cognition science). With this aim in mind, we have chosen to concentrate on findings in the field of cognition science and the field of multimedia learning. Here we have primarily used Richard Mayer's Multimedia Learning Principles* as a basis (*Multimedia Learning, Richard E. Mayer, Cambridge University Press ISBN 978-0-521-73535-3).

His starting point is three basic principles: 1) You can only take in a limited amount of information at a time, 2) the capacity for processing in working memory is limited, and 3) you learn better if you process the material actively along the way.

Based on these points and experimental studies, Mayer has formulated several principles of multimedia learning:

Coherence principle:	People learn better when extraneous words, pictures, and sounds are excluded rather than included.
Signaling principle:	People learn better when the words include cues about the organization of the presentation.
Redundancy principle:	People learn better from animation and narration, than from animation, narration, and on on-screen text.
Spatial contiguity principle:	People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented near rather than far from each other on the page or screen.
Temporal contiguity principle:	People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively.
Segmenting principle:	People learn better when a multimedia lesson is presented in learner-paced segments rather than as a continuous unit.
Pre-training principle:	People learn better from a multimedia lesson when they know the names and characteristics of the main concepts.
Modality principle:	People learn better from animation and narration than from animation and on-screen text.
Multimedia principle:	People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.
Personalization principle:	People learn better when the words are in conversational style rather than formal style.
Voice principle:	People learn better when words are spoken in a standard-accented human voice than in a machine voice or foreign-accented human voice.
Image principle:	People do not necessarily learn better from a multimedia lesson when the speaker’s image is added to the screen.
Individual differences principle:	Design effects are stronger for low-knowledge learners than for high-knowledge learners. Design effects are stronger for high-spatial learners than for low-spatial learners.

We have used these principles as a starting point for our production, but also tested them ourselves, to determine to what extent they are applicable in our context.

The basis of the presentations

In other words, we apply Mayer's principles, but at the same time place great emphasis on performance and completion. Here we use both classical rhetoric and cinematic techniques. The presentation as such should follow classical rhetoric in the various parts:

Exordium	Introduction. An introduction, where the goal is to make the audience aware, benevolent and willing to learn.
Narratio	Background. A concise description of the starting point and prerequisites for the subsequent argumentation.
Propositio	Thesis. The rhetorician explains the message of the presentation. He gives a brief summary of what is to come, and what the goal is.
Partitio	Partition. Partitio will make it easier for the audience to follow the rest of the speech, by explaining how it is laid out (you present how to present).
Argumentatio	Argumentation. The argument for the thesis. The presentation itself.
Conclusio/Peroratio	Conclusion/summary. Here, the goal is to summarize the message, call the audience to action and round off the speech.

This provides a basic structure that is partly reminiscent of Mayer's principles.

We also place great emphasis on achieving the feeling of personal contact with the lecturer/speaker through Exordiom, Personalization principle and Voice principle. And both cinematically and biologically, the face is an important communication channel, therefore we believe that the lecturer's face should be in the picture at least in parts of the videos. Investigations with eye tracking techniques confirm the importance of including a face in pictures.

In other words, the presentation is divided into three parts, and based on:

High academic level. The presentation must be absolutely correct academically, didactically thought out and rhetorical.
Personalization to the user. The message must be delivered in a good way.
High quality.

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