Educational Explainer Videos Explained

Educational explainer videos are a powerful tool for businesses to reach their audience as an effective way to explain complex ideas, products and services. Explainer videos are particularly useful for educational purposes as a medium for learning. They are usually short form, can be paused and rewatched so the audience can learn at their own pace. With video consumption skewed toward a younger demographic, educational explainer videos are an ideal tool for conveying concepts and messages. They are so powerful that around 91% of businesses use video as a key marketing tool.  Video content is also estimated to reach around 92% of all people worldwide.  In this article, we are going to explain what an educational explainer video is, why this medium is so effective and the different types of educational explainer videos.

What is an Educational Explainer video?

Educational explainer videos can come in many different forms, but one common thread is that they aim to impart knowledge on the viewer. Educational explainer videos can be casual or formal, they may be a one-off or a series of multiple videos but they all convey information and explain a topic. Educational explainer videos must help an audience to understand a topic, without overcomplicating things or wasting their time.

Why Are Educational Explainer Videos So Effective?

Educational explainer videos are an extremely effective tool because they break down complex ideas into easy-to-digest snippets, and many viewers find them so engaging, they are constantly keen for more. Here are some key elements that make educational explainer videos particularly effective:

• A short runtime: When attention is a resource, short, pithy video content reigns supreme – having a short runtime means users are less likely to get bored, and more likely to ‘binge’ your educational content.
• Replayability: Generally, effective educational explainer videos are also entertaining – making viewers more likely to return to videos at a later date. This has massive benefits, as repetition is a cornerstone of learning, and ultimately a viewer who visits a particular video more than once, is more likely to understand that topic.
• Efficiently impart information: Videos specifically are a powerful medium for conveying information, as they get attention quicker than text and are much more efficient at sharing information – as the old saying goes, a picture speaks a thousand words. How many words does a narrated short-form video speak? 5000? 10,000? However many, it would be a lot!

Different Types of Educational Explainer Videos

Educational explainer videos don’t just come in one specific type or format – they are extremely varied, from animated to screencast and event character-driven videos. For more details on the 6 main types of educational explainer videos, see below:

• Animated:  Animation is generally more intensive and expensive to produce than live-action videos, so it’s recommended to use animated explainers when you are confident will reach a large audience, or the audience will specifically benefit from seeing animations (children and younger demographics typically prefer animated content).
• Whiteboard: Whiteboard videos are usually a subset of animated videos – starting with a blank, white screen that gets added to with drawings over time as the narrator explains a particular concept. A strong example of this is the agile product management explainer video, which explains a concept from start to finish using the whiteboard technique.
• Screencast: Screencast videos have recently boomed in popularity, on by tools such as Loom, allowing creators to record themselves and the screen at the same time, and narrate something. Because of that, oftentimes these take a more informal, conversational tone.
• Character: Typically animated, these videos make use of an approachable character (bonus points if it is associated with the brand) to explain concepts to viewers. The benefit of using characters in explainer videos is that a character’s presence can provide a natural link between different videos, and act as a point of consistency for the audience.
• Live action: Live action explainer videos are focused on explaining concepts with real people front and centre.- One benefit of this is increased trust – seeing faces creates a human connection, and ultimately makes the viewer more trusting of what they are watching.

How to Create an Educational Explainer Video

While educational explainer videos can come in many shapes and sizes, there are (thankfully) a common set of steps to follow in order to create them. From start to finish, you should think about pre-production (planning), production (filming) and post production (editing or final touches). The specific steps are:

Pre Production

1. Define your message and goal: Every educational explainer video should have a clear goal and message attached – think about the key thing you are hoping the viewer to understand. Keep this in mind at every step of the process, and constantly ask: is the video helping the user to understand  this topic?
2. Write a script: Every great film starts with a great script – and for educational videos it is extremely important to get your facts right. There is room for improvisation, of course, but you must make sure the information you are sharing is accurate and correct, otherwise viewers will lose trust.Don’t improvise with the facts – save that for the ‘fluffy’ parts of the video.
3. Choose your visuals: A big decision here is how you want to convey the information – are you going for a whiteboard, live action or perhaps a character based approach? Each approach has their benefits and trade-offs – but consider the one which is most appropriate for both your audience and message.

Production

4. Shoot/create the video: With everything prepared, now you can  begin creating your video. Key at this stage is efficiency, particularly if you have hired equipment, actors or even a location – it’s important to stay on time in order to keep to a budget.

Post Production

5. Add music and voiceover: Keep users engaged with appropriate music and an engaging narrator.
6. Edit and Polish: Finally, edit the footage you have to suit the audience. At this stage, it’s a great idea to get feedback on the edit you end up with, you can always go back and re-edit based on feedback.

Where Can Educational Explainer Videos Be Used?

There are many appropriate places to use educational explainer videos. Where you choose to put them may depend if you are working for a large corporation or an independent business owner – however, here are four of the most popular:

• Corporate training videos: Corporate training videos help your employees gain the context they need to do their job. One specific example of this is employee onboarding videos which not only can improve the performance of your business, as employees onboard faster – you can also re-use these videos easily across multiple employees, making them highly efficient.
• On your business website: Hosting explainer videos on your website is a great idea – generally, traffic to your website should already have a passing interest in your business, and are primed to take on information. An explainer video can help to meet their needs in this instance.
• On learning sites: Many independent business owners opt to use learning sites as an income stream, by monetising access to their learning videos – for example Udemy, in which explainer videos are effectively monetised to an interested audience. Udemy and other similar sites have many excellent examples of explainer videos, because they are essentially a marketplace for explainer videos.
• YouTube or social media: There are 2.5 billion monthly active users on YouTube, and so the potential audience for any video on YouTube is massive. There are already a wealth of explainer videos of all styles available on YouTube, and many users go to YouTube specifically for this type of content.

After covering what educational explainer videos are, we also made a case for why they are so effective and covered the different types of educational explainer videos. We hope with this new information you are now more sure of the benefits of creating educational explainer videos, and also some appropriate locations to host them. If you are keen to create your own educational explainer videos, at Ivory Media we can help you along that journey. For more information, reach out here.