Why explainer videos have a place in educative settings

The idea of educative explainer videos is not entirely new to schools – but it is a newer idea to most businesses.  Because of the way animated videos successfully grab attention and impart valuable information without being boring, they are an excellent choice for tutorial or training videos. What makes animation so effective, though?  Not surprisingly, a lot of this theory relates to advertising with animation, since it too relays information through the animation process.
 
 
Explaining your point faster via animated video

Animation comprises a different method of communicating with people – both children, and even adults.  By animating tutorials and training information, we then make it easier to absorb  and more exciting to take in. For certain ideas, like putting together a complex product, an animated guide can be much more effective because it can explain things in 3D. Have you ever tried to follow directions to put a product from IKEA together, and ended up finding it utterly maddening?  Cases like these could benefit tremendously from an animation as it is able to describe things more clearly.
 
 
An Example

For example, HowStuffWorks has a description of how gas turbine engines work. There are four pages of text explaining in detail how these engines work, but this could be better explained in an animated video. It is difficult to imagine everything within an engine that happens at once without some sort of video graphic representation – this is because we tend to focus on one thing at a time.  A repeating animation from start to finish would allow people who viewed the video to examine the action as it happens – from start to finish.  There is no need to explain parts that are removed or are not visible, or actions that have ended and why – an animation shows all of this in sequence.  And it can do so without the visitor or viewer becoming bored – 4 pages of text can get tedious and protracted, and prevent someone from really concentrating on the material.
 
 
Efficient Explanations

Instead of a visitor needing 10 minutes to read through the article, with time sprinkled in-between to think and contemplate until they understand the process, we can achieve the same thing more effectively within about 2 minutes.  Much more information can be imparted this way in a shorter period of time. Humans tend to retain animated videos more thoroughly and for a longer period of time, so this ends up being generally better than just basic text. We can also do so from a humorous tone – humans remember things much more easily when they can connect some sort of feeling to the material. Think of the last time you had a rather dramatic situation, be it sad or happy, happen in your life. Likely, when you remember that situation, you can remember exactly what happened in exceptional detail! This is because your mind instantly creates a link to that emotion when the event occurs, so that later on if you experience that feeling again you are reminded of the first situation. All of this is a part of the process of learning and growing.
 
 
Final Thought

It is also extremely valuable to reach out to students in various learning formats – some people learn by reading, others by listening, and still others by watching the process. With the benefit of an animated video, we can provide all three at the same time. It has also been proven that many forms of related sensory input at the same time is more effective for forming long lasting memories, than a single type of input.

Many schools have now adopted animated videos, and businesses are catching up to the trend as well. Especially in the case of demonstrating complex ideas or products quickly, it is fast becoming the most powerful and reliable method of getting a point across. Especially today, when videos can go “viral”, animated video education is more vital to our society than ever – and it is useful to customers or visitors because it presents your goal in as accurate a light as possible, without leaving anything out.