Snapshot
Research and Development: A dive into video lecture length recommendations
“I think a video lecture will work really great here!” I say.
“Okay. I can do that. Can you come record my class?” the instructor says.
“Well, I think you should record a lecture for this online course specifically,” I say.
“Ah, okay, can you help me with that? I can deliver my usual lecture if you tell me how to record it.”
I brace myself. “I can do that, but I need to tell you: The research says that the video should be no longer than 20 minutes. Maybe we can split your normal lecture into parts—”
“What research?” the instructor asks.
I gulp.
We’re all guilty of repeating information for which we’ve never read the evidence. No one has time to fact check everything. Besides, “The research says…” is a much more compelling way to start a sentence than, “There are a lot of nuanced arguments from various disciplines that suggest…”
We can be forgiven for relying on vague evidence from time to time. Occasionally, though, we must take a step back to examine even our most oft-quoted beliefs. Hopefully, we do this before we are asked for evidence in the middle of a consultation.
I’ve been repeating some version of the above for years, but it had never crossed my mind to find the primary source for what I was claiming. I’ve been reading some version of “the 20-minute rule” for many years in industry blogs, online magazines, and blog posts about the optimal keynote. It’s not always 20 minutes. Sometimes the rule is 10 or even 8 minutes! And why not? This kind of viral common sense is so compelling because it just feels right. We all have the experience of getting bored a quarter of the way through a lecture. It sounds correct, so it must be correct.
One day last spring, I was preparing a workshop about mini lectures to deliver to faculty. After I wrote some version of the 20-minute rule on a slide, I thought I’d reference it for good measure. As widespread as the claim is, I expected this to be easy. I’m sorry to tell you that this is a rabbit hole I’m still falling down. Join me as I tumble, because I think that we can learn a lot from examining where this claim might have come from.
How did we get here
The source of the 20-minute claim is a tangled ball of yarn, to be sure. I read all the articles referencing the rule I could seeking a source. If the articles had a citation (most did not) they used the same language and reference as the Wikipedia article about attention span which claims:
Common estimates for sustained attention to a freely chosen task range from about five minutes for a two-year-old child, to a maximum of around 20 minutes for older children and adults.
The cited source for this information is a book called The Essential 20: Twenty Components of an Excellent Health Care Team written by David Cornish and Diane Dukette and published in 2009. As you may have guessed, the essential 20 does not refer to the 20-minute attention span. In fact, the book only mentions attention briefly in a section a few pages long called “Attention and Inattention”. The claim that appears in the Wikipedia article is uncited. Though adjacent paragraphs cite work about sustained attention, there seems to be no information about the length of the adult attention span that can be directly associated with the figure quoted for children or adults. This is a dead-end for many of the articles that cite this rule.
As instructional designers, we must often reach into other fields for expertise, so I did. A preliminary search for research on this topic in neuroscience, neuropsychology, and cognitive psychology yielded no good matches for this information.
What we can say about attention during lectures
Feeling discouraged, I decided to get more specific. Why are we citing generic studies about attention spans anyway? Surely research about attention during lectures is more precise and relevant to my work. Fortunately, Wilson and Korn published a review of research related to student attention to lectures in 2009 that directly addresses the 10- to 15-minute claims made by those in our field. The researchers considered an array of study designs including those that used note taking, retention, clickers, and observation to measure engagement with instructors’ presentations. Their conclusion is definitive:
It is clear that students’ attention does vary during lectures, but the literature does not support the perpetuation of the 10- to 15-min attention estimate. Perhaps the only valid use of this parameter is as a rhetorical device to encourage teachers to develop ways to maintain student interest in the classroom. (p. 88)
With this in mind, I had one more rock to turn over: video. Wilson and Korn were focused on face-to-face lecture. Maybe video lectures were riper for a specific claim since it’s possible to pull many metrics from streaming video players.
More research is needed in this area. However, Guo, Kim, and Rubins’ (2014) analysis of more than 6.9 million viewing sessions from the edX MOOC platform is interesting for two reasons:
- They found that students were far more engaged with shorter videos with views dropping sharply at about 9 minutes.
- Pre-production, speaking rate, the inclusion of talking-head shots, but not high value production seemed to affect overall engagement.
There we have it. Nine minutes with a lot of other considerations in mind. It’s not 20 or even 10 minutes, but it’s something to shoot for.
Why you should still stick with shorter videos
I’d come full circle. We should be suggesting shorter video lectures, but not really because of iron-clad evidence about attention spans. There are several good reasons we can intuit from our experiences developing courses:
- Short videos mean more efficient uploading, buffering, and data management.
- Separating content into shorter, well-titled videos can help students plan their learning.
- The evidence does point to a decline in attention over time. The exact span is determined by many factors.
No need to make things complicated! These are fine reasons to request that instructors piece out their presentations.
What can we do about faulty research claims
Instructional designers strive to be the place that faculty and other university staff look to as experts in learning technology, pedagogy, and other educational fields. To do this, we must hold our work and ourselves up to the highest standards of scholarly discourse. This means that sometimes we must do away with the hard and fast rules and engage with the nuances of learning. Let’s avoid making blanket statements about how the brain works and stick with what we know about distance learning from research closer to home.
“Research says” is good enough when we’ve read the article. When we haven’t or can’t, let’s be gentle with our instructors, developers, and ourselves. Informed research and experience should guide a good designer. That’s just part of the exciting cocktail of art and science we call instructional design.
References
Attention span. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved August 30, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_span
Cornish, David; Dukette, Dianne (2009). The Essential 20: Twenty Components of an Excellent Health Care Team. Pittsburgh, PA: RoseDog Books. pp. 72–78.
Guo, P. J., Kim, J., & Rubin, R. (2014, March). How video production affects student engagement: an empirical study of MOOC videos. In Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Learning@ scale conference (pp. 41-50). ACM.
Wilson, K., & Korn, J. H. (2007). Attention during lectures: Beyond ten minutes. Teaching of Psychology, 34(2), 85-89.
Comment:
Thank you for sharing this insightful article on the myth of sustained attention and video lectures.
It’s fascinating to see how the “20-minute rule” has been perpetuated
without a solid foundation in research. The exploration of various sources and their
limitations highlights the importance of verifying claims and understanding the context in which they were made.
The findings from the review of research related to student attention to
lectures (Wilson & Korn, 2009) are particularly interesting.
The conclusion that the literature does not support the perpetuation of the 10- to 15-minute attention estimate is eye-opening.
This further emphasizes the need for instructional designers and educators to focus on maintaining student interest through
various methods rather than relying solely on the length of the lecture.
The additional research on video lectures (Guo, Kim, & Rubin, 2014) is also valuable.
The finding that students are more engaged with shorter videos and the factors affecting overall engagement provide practical guidance for creating more effective video lectures.
However, it is essential to note that more research is needed in this
area, and the results may not be universally applicable.
In conclusion, while it is still beneficial to create shorter video lectures,
the reasons for doing so should be based on factors
such as efficient uploading, buffering, and data management,
rather than a rigid adherence to the “20-minute rule.” This approach
allows for a more nuanced and evidence-based approach to instructional design, which can ultimately lead
to better learning experiences for students.
Review my webpage Alexander
Brain Rules by John Medina.
https://brainrules.net/
Have you read this book or heard him speak? Fascinating!
John Medina is a developmental molecular biologist with a lifelong fascination for how the mind reacts to and organizes information. He is an affiliate professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Medina is also the director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research at Seattle Pacific University.
Hello very interesting
Could you agree if i am rewriting you content in Belajar Dasar Teknisi
Thanks
Hey Jennifer,
Thanks for reading! I’d say this is less a persuasive article than a look at were this claim comes from and why it makes sense to a lot of designers and instructors. To that end, I wanted to address your points:
1. I agree! That’s why I was curious why it was cited so often and took a look at the primary source from the Wikipedia article. The primary source does not even properly cite the claim, so it’s just wrong all the way down. I need to add a comment to the Talk Page for Wikipedia’s editors.
2. Those two sources are discussed but not held up as evidence here:
a. Cornish, David; Dukette, Dianne (2009) – This is the primary source from Wikipedia with no clear evidence.
b. Wilson, K., & Korn, J. H. (2007) – This is an analysis of about 8 studies dealing with attention during face-to-face lectures. The conclusion is that the 10-minute rule is too vague. Attention varies during lecture depending on the rhetorical devices used. It has less to do with technology and more to do with the idea that students do lose attention at some point during a lecture.
3. Yes, motivation is definitely a factor in attention and findings based on MOOCs are not always generally applicable. As I mention in the article, more research is definitely needed. The findings are interesting because they compared production techniques and the very large sample size.
I was disheartened by how little hard evidence there was for these claims. That’s why I caution against using a hard-and-fast rule and err more of suggesting shorter video for technical and design reasons. Short videos broken up by topic are simply easier to navigate.
Interesting article, but not convincing. Here is why I am not convinced:
1) Wikipedia is not a valid research source
2) Two sources are outdated research and not applicable to current day video or current day student population. Further, how many people had smartphones and high speed internet at their homes when these items were written?
3) The current source (Guo, Kim, & Rubin, 2014) studied engagement with a MOOC which is a voluntary endeavor, therefore it is natural to expect a shorter viewing span activity. Plus, their research does not indicate the reasons views stopped at that period – we must have the WHY behind this phenomenon before we can make assumptions of truth.