Video Content and Learning

Article Contents

Video as a learning medium has become increasingly popular on the web. Many sites now even cater solely to video learning content (e.g., Academic Earth, TED Talks, Khan Academy). With the use of video as a compact and compelling medium, however, comes the responsibility of making it an effective platform for users with a myriad of different needs and preferences.

Broadly speaking, the following considerations have a major impact on the inclusivity of video players:

Take Away

Managing the Multi-modality of Video

Videos typically come in complementing audio and video tracks. While many learners find this valuable in most situations, not all learners and not all situations are amenable to consuming videos in that format. Consider, for instance, a student watching a lecture video at a quiet library without headphones, or at a loud coffee shop. To a student in such situations, the audio track in videos is useless.

Similarly, there are many learners who, for chronic or situational reasons, prefer “listening” to a video, and not watching it. The combination of these two factors (learners who prefer “seeing” a video, and learners who prefer “listening” to a video) means that we should provide learners with content that is still clear and understandable with just one sense (hearing or vision).

Thus, video should ideally have at least three layers of content:

  1. The standard simultaneous audio and video track layer.
  2. A purely visual layer, where any aural content is converted to visible text. This is typically in the form of closed captions, subtitles, and transcripts (see Subtitles, Closed captions, and Transcripts)
  3. A purely aural layer, where any visual content is converted into aural form. This is typically in the form of audio-based video descriptions.

Subtitles, Closed captions, and Transcripts

Subtitles, closed captions, and transcripts provide users with a visual text track that they can read along with or separate from the video track.

Subtitles are the text displayed on the screen simultaneous with the video that is typically composed just of dialogue. Oftentimes, subtitles are translated into other languages for localization (see Localization of Video Content).

Closed captions are texts displayed on the screen simultaneous with the video that includes both dialogue and other audio content (e.g., <jazz music playing in the background>, <loud crashing noise>).

Transcripts are the full text of audio tracks, which are useful both while watching and independent of the video. Oftentimes, to offer increased readability, transcripts provide additional content structure that closed captions and subtitles do not (e.g., paragraphs, headings, etc.).

Examples of subtitling authoring tools:

Visual and Aural Considerations

Visual considerations

While there are limitations to what can be done with the video content after it’s been produced, the video playing interface, captions/subtitles, and transcripts should be made as inclusive as possible. The various transformations for interfaces and text (see Learner needs and preferences) apply to video subtitles, captions, transcripts and the video playing interface.

These include:

Aural considerations

The space of what can be effectively and easily done to benefit aural inclusion is limited. The most fundamental preference option is volume control, but beyond that, one can also perform post-processing to even out volume, limit volume, and augment vocal frequencies.

Localization of Video Content

Both the purely visual and purely aural layers (see above section) should be localized for different languages. This ensures the content is not exclusive to one particular language, and is also particularly helpful for learners who are both learning a new topic as well as a new language.

Operability of the Video Player

Ensuring that video content can be consumed by a diversity of users and in a diversity of situations is important, but those efforts are in vain if the video player itself cannot be easily operated.

Beyond basic usability considerations, video players should ensure that:

Breaking the Forced Pace and Linearity of Video

Video content is, by default, intended to be consumed at a prescribed rate (one second of video content consumed per one second of learning time), in a prescribed direction (specifically, in forward frame-by-frame sequence). This prevents learners from learning at their own pace (since their pace must be exactly that of the learning content’s pace), as well as in their own arrangement (since the content must be consumed in the order that it was created).

Contrast this to books. Books can be consumed at the learner’s own pace (they can spend as much time reading a sentence as they’d like), and in their own arrangement (they can read a chapter on French art, and then another chapter on Japanese art, in that order, even if that was not the order of the book).

To break the pace and linear consumption of video, we should use video players with the following functionality:

(Additionally, video players supporting structured content are also of value.)

Allowing for scannable content allows users to see both what’s ahead and what was already presented, without having to either wait for the video to present it or watch the video all over again. Allowing learners to easily skip from point to point on the video gives them the chance to review previous material, or skip ahead to relevant material.

The combination of the two–scannable and skippable content–help to break the forced pace and linear consumption of video content.

Case Study: Floe Video Player

Screenshot of the Floe video player, with captions and interactive transcript on

Figure 1: A screen capture of the Floe Video Player. The interface shows a video being played with captions overlaid the video. While an interactive text transcript follows along on the side.

In practice, the Floe video player accomplishes many of the goals of an inclusive video playing platform. Its key features include:

There are also future plans for video annotation, structured video (dividing videos into chapters and sections), and bookmarks.

See a demo of the current version of the Floe video player (not all features might be implemented)

Screenshot of the Floe video player, in its default configuration

Figure 2: Floe video player, in its default configuration.

Screenshot of the Floe video player, showing different transcript localization options, as well as the option for
requesting different transcripts

Figure 3: Floe video player, showing different transcript localization options, as well as the option for requesting different transcripts.

Screenshot of the Floe video player, with frame and caption preview on hover over the scrub bar

Figure 4: Floe video player, with frame and caption preview on hover over the scrub bar.

Screenshot of the Floe video player, with enlarged interface

Figure 5: Floe video player, with enlarged interface.

Screenshot of the Floe video player, in yellow-on-black contrast mode

Figure 6: Floe video player, in yellow-on-black contrast mode.