Training Videos: Lights, Camera, Action... Let’s Review!

Training Videos: Lights, Camera, Action... Let’s Review!
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Summary: Recently I was given the task of revising one of our older training programs. It was your generic, synchronous eLearning program talking about professionalism in the workplace; not a lot of interactivity or graphics in it, but it got the job done. In addition to adding colorful backgrounds and activities to the program, I decided to add a video to the end of the program that would allow the employees to review everything they had just learned in a fun, visual format. What follows is an example of how training videos help with reviewing training material and enhance the corporate learning experience.

Why You Should Add Training Videos To Your Corporate Learning Programs 

The idea for the video was to show various situations throughout the day in which the employees in the video were not being very professional. Most of the scenes were portrayed as over-the-top as possible, so that it was obvious what the employees were doing wrong. It was handled in a way so that no one would think we were targeting them specifically with our examples, since a lot of them were based on real events. We also shot several more subtle issues, such as employees helping customers with their sunglasses on top of their heads, etc. to see if our employees taking the program would notice this as wrong or not.

Trainees were given a worksheet and told to keep track of all the things they noticed as unprofessional in the video.

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Once they had reviewed the entire video, an answer sheet was provided to them so they could compare their worksheet to the answer sheet and see if they had spotted all of the unprofessional behavior. A few items were purposely left off the list and the employees were told that there were a few more items in the video that were note worthy of being unprofessional and they were encouraged to review the video as many times as they wanted to in order to spot all of these items.

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This review video provided a fun, visual way for employees to apply what they had just learned in the program. Video is a great medium for reviews because it touches on several learning styles: Visual, audio, and in this case kinesthetic too, because the employees had to write down and keep track of the various unprofessional behaviors they witnessed while watching the video. This type of exercise really allowed them to apply what they had just learned regarding professional/unprofessional behavior in a safe environment.

So next time you want learners to practice what they learned in a fun new way, try using training videos and have your trainees saying, “Lights, camera, train me!”