Interactive training videos are a form of media that eLearning can borrow from marketing. Interactive videos gained popularity in sales and marketing when Flash was a popular multimedia software platform to create digital media solutions.

In this blog, we will explore how interactive videos can make your training more engaging.

What Is Interactive Training Video?

An Interactive training video is a multimedia recording that can support user interactions. Users can interact with the content, navigate the storyline, reveal their choices, etc.

Interactive Training Video Vs. Linear Video

Linear video is the traditional form and most of us are familiar with it. The user can select play, pause, rewind, and fast forward the content in this type of video. On the other hand, an interactive training video allows the user to click, drag, scroll, swipe, and hover over the content revealing more details with each interaction.

Functionalities Of Interactive Videos

The most commonly used functionalities in interactive videos are:

• Branching: It allows user control and personalizes the learning by allowing different paths and skipping irrelevant content.

• Click and reveal: It refers to clickable content which reveals more details as the learner progresses.

• Hotspots: These are clickable areas within a video, which reveal a separate web page or content within the video.

• 360-degree view: It allows the learners to get a 360-degree view of the object on the screen.

• Forms: You can insert forms within the video, which allow the collection of user data.

• Quizzes: Quizzes can be built into the video to deliver assessments and personalized results to the learner.

These interactivities make viewing the videos an engaging experience. However, a great interactive video must be designed with the end-user in mind, and interactivity should be used only to enhance the user experience.

Where Can We Use Interactive Videos?

You can use Interactive training videos to build skills like sales, marketing, and leadership. They can be used in customer service training to improve product knowledge. They can also help in health and safety training, compliance, recruitment, and onboarding. Interactive videos are also used in healthcare, financial services, and other sectors across industries.

Benefits Of Interactive Training Videos

As the organizations and businesses recognize the benefits of interactive training videos, it is gaining traction within the workplace learning and training. Let’s look at some of the reasons why you should use more interactive videos in your training.

1. Engagement:

Interactive training videos are highly engaging. These are learner-centric and rely on storytelling, which keeps the learners engaged. It can take storytelling to new heights, where the learner can become a character and experience the story.

2. Compatibility:

Interactive videos are compatible with most authoring tools. These tools either allow the addition of video content or allow you to import the content. You can also use the built-in functionality of these tools to create branching scenarios and hotspots.

3. Gamification:

Interactive videos can be easily gamified. You can give decision-making control to the learner on how the course or learning should proceed. You can accomplish this by using branching and creating different content paths to produce a unique learning experience. You can award points, badges, rewards, and final scores to motivate the learner and to give them a game-based learning experience.

4. Trackability:

You can easily integrate interactive training videos with the LMS. They allow the collection of participant data easily.

5. Mobile friendly:

Most of the training is consumed on mobile and interactive training videos will make learning more accessible.

Conclusion

Interactive training videos should be an integral part of the eLearning offerings. Interactive experiences provided through these videos will deliver an immersive experience for learners. If you are unsure about where to start with interactive content, you could create a few pilot projects and test a few different approaches with the technology and content strategy and see how it works. The key is to start small.