The main advantages video has over the text

In recent years, video has slowly been introduced into e-learning platforms and many online courses. During the Covid pandemic – video conferencing tools were the main means that made the online classes possible, thus proving themselves as an excellent option for education.

Of course, the potential of videos is not limited just to the academic and teaching portals. Sales and marketing departments use it to create their video marketing campaigns. With an explainer video, companies can reach more customers, and increase their sales. According to IdeaRocket, each user watches around 200 videos monthly, and 60% of executives claim that if both text and video are given for a specific topic, they would rather choose the video. 

There are also other statistics that uncover video superiority over the text. They reveal that customers also prefer video: users spend 88% more time on a website that contains a video, and videos generate 12 times more shares than images and text combined.

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Historic Overview

The Internet is changing every day, constantly growing its size. It feels like we accessed it via a 56k dial-up connection recently, and today we face the Internet of things and ubiquitous content creation. Podcasting was introduced as a new and powerful medium (that combines audio, the web, and portable media players), and also a disruptive technology that caused some TV/radio broadcasters to reconsider their practices of production and distribution.

Here we give brief timeline of online video penetration over the past 30 years:

• 1993 – Severe Tire Damage hosted the first Internet live concert.
• 1995 - ActiveMovie brings video streaming to the masses.  
• 1999 – P2P sharing of video content (e.g. Napster).
• In 2000 (October), the concept of attaching sound and video files in RSS feeds was proposed and implemented by Dave Winer, a software developer and an author of the RSS format.
• 2005 – First YouTube video uploaded.
• 2006 – introduction of broadband Internet (cable, DSL, optics).
• 2010 – the Web becomes a mainstream platform for TV and movies, thanks to the streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime.
• 2015 – Facebook becomes YouTube's main competitor in sharing video content.
• 2017 – 300 hours of video are uploaded online every minute.
• 2022 – YouTube has 2.6 billion users. It is the third most visited site today. Around 4 trillion videos are watched every year.

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Top 5 advantages that video has over text

Some people learn better while reading, while others learn faster with visuals such as images and videos. Reading and watching are two different types of perceiving information, so the question is what are the advantages of the video over the written material?

1. ‍Video Content is Rich. Videos use visual and audio means to present the whole picture and better explain the whole story. In practice – the attendee can get more information from a 2-minute video compared to reading two minutes of text. Videos are fast and efficient, which is why online course providers are including them often. Videos can include and explain formulas and diagrams. They can also present visually natural phenomena, market trends, society events, traffic, etc. It’s a powerful tool that makes an impact on the viewer and provides a personal touch to communication. 
2. Video Content is Engaging and Provokes action. The text is not as engaging as the video – it’s as simple as that. Videos provoke a more engaging, multiple sensory input, unlike the print materials alone. Students are able to see and listen to the topic being taught, and young generations can process videos in a very efficient and accustomed way. Experiments can be thoroughly explained in the video, so the students can repeat the procedure by themselves.
3. Enables Better Comprehension. Videos help students understand concepts by inspiring imagination and stimulating their cognitive capabilities. The visual form is a more entertaining way to consume content and enables easier comprehension of the material. Researchers discovered that brain activity in the right hemisphere is enhanced when watching video training. The short-term memory areas are also activated because students have to remember what they have just seen in the video sequence and connect it with reality.
4. Memory Recall. Researchers also proved that when reading the material silently, the student has 10% retention. In the case of reading aloud, the retention can be up to 50%. And if a student practices writing notes when s/he reads aloud, the retention percentage can be as high as 70% (since the material was read, heard, and written). When watching a video - the ‘see and hear’ effects are combined. Therefore, the students can have a memory recall rate of up to 50% when watching a video.
5. Return-on-Invested time (watching/ reading). With textbooks, it always takes longer to read the book than to get the information from a video. The reason is evident - the information in the video doesn’t have all the detail and hints as to the original book. So when you have limited time to explain some concept, watching the video might be the solution. Although it takes longer to learn from a book, the effect of reading is still better for some students. If time is not a factor - the longer time needed to read a lecture is worthwhile.

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Conclusion

Today, videos are the main medium that the young generation uses for communication and learning. Kids spend significant time watching online videos and videos are maybe the perfect medium that you can use to present new knowledge. If you truly intend to get a better, more immersive and meaningful learning experience for your students, then you should definitely consider using videos in the classroom. It's quite easy to do that and you can be assured that results will pay off largely in the long run.

Omnisearch’s set of e-learning enhancement tools, help the students to catch up if they miss a lecture. They allow the students to search for any information covered within the video lectures and get the needed information within seconds. They can search for information based on topics or specific keywords, then rewatch that section of the lecture, as well as read the transcription. So, not only will students have transcriptions of their lectures - all of the information is stored in an easily searchable database.

Our search tool meets all of the end user's expectations and the developers can easily integrate robust and modern search capabilities into your website or application. The provided API creates an index, by retrieving ahead - so that it can respond quickly with relevant search results. Indexing is a must for good search engines that meet up the users' expectations.

Omnisearch tools can significantly improve your e-learning platform and will increase overall student satisfaction. With our transcription and search tools - the functionality of your current e-learning system will be enhanced, and you will gain more students. Feel free to contact us for a quick demo on how to improve your e-learning platform.