#interactivenarrative

Lectures…Do you remember them from university or college? Few were good. Most were boring.

Yet, they are probably the most used tool for teaching in higher education. Even today where we focus a lot on using iPads and internet related technologies for educating our young people. It’s still the lecture that learning circles around. Only now it’s a video based one.

It’s motion picture! Ask yourself this, if traditional lectures are boring in general why would a video based one be less boring? Because it’s on Youtube? Doubt it. Watching a “talking head” on a video is so very uninspiring no matter how it’s delivered. Even if it’s filmed in great quality and the presenter really knows how to deliver a lecture with excitement, it’s still boring.

The simple reason is that nothing happens on the video. After all, it’s a media format based on motion pictures, so you better use pictures in motion in order for it to be exciting. And few professors do that.

Tight picture frame Are there exceptions? Yes, you can use video to set the stage with a very tight picture frame where almost nothing happens except on the soundtrack. That way the “viewer” can use the video as a soundchannel - like a podcast. But you better be sure that your tight picture frame has some kind of visual quality to it. It acts as an anchor point for the viewer, which makes him stick around for what’s on the soundtrack.

Does recording a video lecture for the flipped classroom using the camera on your laptop live up to that criteria? No, it does not. Does a recorded lecture in a real classroom meet those requirements? No, it does not. It’s like watching a mix between a hangout call and theater on film. Doesn’t work, and if it does it demands a highend production team behind it.

Redefine video lectures What should we do with video lectures then? Forget about them altogether?

No, we don’t think so. They do have value, but maybe it’s time to redefine how knowledge is transferred from a professor to a student. If we are serious about the flipped classroom and everything else going on in edtech, shouldn’t we try to find a better way of teaching digitally?

There are no doubt many approaches to this, and at the end of the day the individual teacher knows best. However, here at BLIND SPOT we believe that interactive narratives may play a much bigger role in education than we ever thought they would.

Like playing a game We actually believe they can replace the lecture as we know it altogether. Not by taking a professor delivering a message on video out of the equation, but by softening such video lectures up by making them interactive.

Imagining you watch just three minutes of video lecture and then move on to other kinds of media files collected from around the internet. Since it’s interactive it’s by definition non-linear content, which means you can navigate the narrative in many different ways. Like playing a game where you move around in a maze. It gives each viewer an individual experience and makes the experience much more immersive.

Along the way you may encounter another three minute video lecture and maybe even a couple more - much like finding gems in a game. It engages the students to a much larger degree - quite simply because it’s serious fun to look for them.

Collaborative potential The true upside, though, is when each student can add to the interactive narrative by implementing his own stuff. For instance a recording of a lab experiment, or a real life foreign language situation recorded with his iPhone, or whatever makes sense in the context. That’s when it becomes an interactive narrative with an enormous collaborative potential.