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Guideline 5
Draw students in immediately.

Create a Compelling Introduction

Strive to grab your students' attention in the first 30 seconds. Make your introduction compelling and motivate them to continue watching all the way through. Challenge yourself to answer the question they are asking themselves: "Why should I watch this video?" Avoid repeating information on your title slide that speaks for itself; jump right into your narrative.

Increase Your Presence as the Instructor

Engagement. Whether you appear onscreen in the video or narrate offscreen, you should personalize your lecture and foster a student connection to you as the instructor. Research has shown that faculty appearing onscreen alongside their content is rarely distracting to students and does serve to increase their engagement (although it does not impact retention of the content presented).

If you prefer to remain offscreen, narrating your lecture, consider a brief onscreen introduction that precedes the lecture proper. This is a better approach to deliver the compelling introduction discussed above.

Increase Engagement through Narrative

Storytelling is an inherently powerful narrative technique. Consider recasting your lecture as a story, or as a collection of smaller stories woven together by big ideas. This is an ideal strategy to hook your students immediately and sustain their interest until the end of the story. 

What does an engaging narrative accomplish? What does it include?
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• Takes students on a meaningful "mental journey" using a clear beginning, rising action, and a satisfying conclusion
• Integrates with previous experience and knowledge
• Provides examples of real world application
• Poses and answers a "big question" or a "big idea"; may tell an origin story

Guideline 6
Keep slide text to a minimum.

Follow the Three "Don'ts"

As a general principle, think of your slides as primarily visual in nature, without much text. The slides don't need to present your narrative; your narration is already doing that. That said, text does play a role, which we will explain below. First, though, start with these general guidelines:

• Don't put a significant amount of text on any of your slides
• Don't outline your presentation on the slides themselves; keep this in your notes
• Don't read your slide text to your students!

Use Bullet Points and Brief Wording

• Use bullet points rather than complete sentences or paragraphs
• Use text to reinforce or highlight key concepts and takeaways
• Provide the details in the narration
• Treat your slides like billboards along a highway: students should be able to take away the main ideas in three seconds or less

Avoid Data Dumps of Numerical Information

When displaying data, avoid a "data dump". Complex tables require much effort to read and understand. If you need to show a comparison, split up the table into multiple slides, using one statistical comparison per slide.

Provide Downloadable Handouts

Where more detailed text is essential, provide it in a downloadable handout. This frees you from the feeling that you must somehow jam that text into the slides. A companion handout can augment the lecture; there you can restate the key points, provide more detail on select topics where time was limited, give students web links, pose questions for reflection or submission, or provide real world application or case studies.

Guideline 7
Make visuals complement the narration, not compete.

Avoid Unnecessary Visuals

Important! The graphics you include on a slide should "mesh" with the narrative to support and enhance it. Unnecessary visuals (or text or sound) increase the cognitive load for students, reducing the coherence of your communication.

Use High-Quality Graphics

Use high-quality graphics that are readily understood (not marred by distortion, pixelation, or low resolution).

Avoid Text-Dense Graphics

Graphics should not be word-heavy or complex in structure. Just as with presenting data, use multiple slides to walk through more complex structures.

Guideline 8
Use animations and “building” slides appropriately.

When a Built-Up Slide is Appropriate

Animations or building slides work well with conveying processes, comparisons, and more detailed information.

• Slides with many labels (like a diagram) are suited to a build-up approach
• Simple tables (like a matrix for comparison) are suited to a build-up approach
• Multi-stage processes benefit from a building display
• Slides with a greater amount of text should build in stages to prevent students from reading ahead

Students who read ahead increase their distraction and cognitive load and may not attend to narration properly.

Reserve Animation for Visuals Best Understood in Motion

Avoid "catchy" animations that merely serve to display or erase information, or transition between slides. These effects add nothing to the content presented, and serve to distract students by adding to their cognitive load.

Guideline 9
Synchronize Information Display with Narration.

Synchronize the display of text and images that you are referencing with your mention of them in your narration. The moment that you say it is the moment they see it. Research shows that coordinating the auditory and visual elements reduces student cognitive load and helps them focus on your content.

Guideline 10
Maximize the video lecture’s shelf life.

Avoid Dated References

Avoid including information in the video that will unnecessarily date the lecture content, such as time and date references ("this week", "October 9th", "last year"). Dates and times will be maintained as textual information in the web page itself where they can be kept current.

Reference Other Lectures by Name

If you need to reference another lecture in your narration, be sure to refer to it by title, not by sequence ("the previous lecture") or an associated number ("the Lesson 3 lecture"). Most courses are revised at some point, and numbered or sequential references may not remain accurate. Also, remember that students may view lectures out of sequence.

Website Links and References

You may include "tours" of relevant informational websites, web-based application demonstrations, or desktop-based tools. Examples include showing students how to use a set of features in a digital design tool, or touring students through a virtual museum.

Just remember that software interfaces change and websites change in content, structure, and location. A heavy reliance on a particular application will require frequent updating of video (whether your own or a third party) as new versions are released.

Should you wish to encourage students to explore sites you have shown, provide the links in the webpage (rather than referencing them in the video itself). There you can write a brief description of the site and why students should explore it.