How to learn from video courses?

Online is one of the symbols of our time. It has almost everything: entertainment, shopping, banking, government services, education, and even medicine. We will talk about education, not general education, but accelerated education because speed symbolizes the era.

A new profession, language, or craft can now be obtained in a couple of weeks or months, without even leaving home, by mastering the video course of some online school. However, this is not about “I looked and became a master” because you need to be able to learn qualitatively from video courses, but few people talk about this. But in vain.

This material will teach you how and what you can learn from video courses. This process can be called self-education – an important skill that one should have in a rapidly changing world to adapt to new conditions. To master this skill, we invite you to the program “The Best Self-Education Techniques, “where in a few weeks, you will learn about effective methods of self-study and the transformation of knowledge into practical skills.

Did you know that the quality of learning depends on the cognitive abilities of the brain? They can be developed by improving the ability to think quickly and generate ideas and new solutions to familiar problems. 

What are video courses?

A video course is a training program in a series of video lessons compiled systematically to teach a person new skills. This is a relatively new way to get an education. It became especially popular during the pandemic in 2020 when people were looking for ways to change their profession, deepen their knowledge in some profile or learn a foreign language without leaving home.

Video courses can be paid and free, depending on the topic’s specifics and the author’s task. They are professionals in a particular field: programmers, translators, psychologists, teachers, managers, stylists, and there are even cynological courses.

The main difference between paid video courses is a minimum of water and advertising; the presenters usually immediately go to the heart of the matter without wasting time on the introduction, acquaintance, and advertising of some paid products (yes, free courses usually act as promotions for paid products or speaker goods). We also note that free video courses only sometimes provide high-quality information in full, sufficient for mastering a given topic.

Online learning options

Video courses are one of the options for learning materials for remote learning. Along with them are popular:

• Webinars are live seminars that can be recorded and later used as part of a video course. The disadvantage of a webinar is often long duration of 1.5-2 hours and a rigid reference to the time the broadcast takes place. If the organizers do not make a recording and then provide it to the participants, this is not the most comfortable training option for busy people with a busy schedule. The advantage of the webinar is the opportunity to receive feedback from the speaker in live mode.
• Long reads are long tutorial articles like the one you are reading. Depending on the specifics of the material, the long read may include graphs, visual diagrams and tables, images, and audio and video inserts. Plus, the article is always at hand; you don’t have to listen to it (a great option for people with visual perception). Minus – the long read aims to solve a single topic, not a complex one, as it can be implemented in a whole video course.
• A podcast is an audio recording of educational, news, or informational material. They are suitable for training skills that interest a narrow audience. Learning foreign languages ​​using podcasts is convenient – in this case, visual accompaniment is often unnecessary. You can listen to such material in the car, on the road, or vacation. Podcasts are often free.
• Online marathons are mini-courses that can be a series of webinars or video tutorials. They help to learn something new and master simple skills or habits quickly. During the marathon, the participants are fueled by interest in buying longer and deeper training, for which they are held free.
• Online quests and games – a learning format using techniques to acquire practical experience for participants that they can use in life. This is also a short-term event, one of which is to increase participants’ loyalty to a deeper course of the speaker.

A video course is more in demand than online learning events due to offline accessibility, visibility, capacity, and depth. According to statistics, 37% of respondents prefer this format. Recorded lessons can be watched conveniently in any mode – speed up, slow down in places, pause. They have a lot of visual inserts; video courses can be supplemented with printed materials.

Separately, we note the tutorial – this is a kind of video lesson in the format of clear video instruction. This is a step-by-step algorithm for completing a task: creating a picture, writing a program or book, weaving from beads, etc. Usually, the speaker in the tutorial reveals the question on a specific example, which the participants must either reproduce or do by analogy in the future.

What is the difference between a video course and an online course?

Online courses are broadcast on the Internet, so there is a link to the time of their conduct. You can ask questions to the teacher in the chat and get answers. After the online broadcast, the recording is usually saved and provided to the participants for a certain period; it can be reviewed without feedback.

The video course assumes the presence of recorded lessons, to access which you need to go to your account on a special platform, for example, Coursera. To make mastering the material consistently, each next lesson opens at a certain time or after completing the test/homework. Additional teaching materials are also stored in the personal account. In this format, feedback is possible through the mail, internal chat on the platform, or in the homework field.

Despite the high demand for video courses, not all online schools produce them; the goals and objectives of the program determine this format. For some, direct interaction between students and teachers is important, so they work only online.

You can start training on a video course from scratch without having specific knowledge of the issue under study. This full-fledged educational program can help you master any topic within the lessons, subject to a responsible approach. As in any program, the training system is built from simple to complex in a logical sequence of the issues under consideration.

This is the beauty of paid studies – they are structured. At the same time, no one controls the user’s dynamics in free materials, which means that the student can jump from topic to topic, which will only lead to confusion and a decrease in the quality of education. Free video courses from a torrent also need to give you confidence that you have studied the issue properly – how to control this if the topic is new and unknown?

The composition of the video course

All video courses are compiled according to a program that involves the consistent development of the topic. They consist of recorded lessons available to participants for a limited time.

In addition to the videos themselves, additional materials can be offered for training :

1. Workbooks for doing homework and tracking learning progress. We will talk about the need to do homework below.
2. Transcription of the lesson – a text recording of the lecture. The format is convenient for those who find it more convenient to read rather than listen, take notes, and look for key phrases. Transcription can replace a summary or textbook.
3. Summary of the lesson with the main thoughts, graphs, and tables.

Additional materials for the video course may or may not be attached. Their presence helps to improve the development of the material qualitatively.

A video course is not only a talking head of a speaker. The facilitator can use screencasts – recording a computer screen with voice accompaniment, scribing – displaying a screen on which the teacher draws during the narration, presentations, and screenshots. In this way, he reinforces the verbal flow with visual images for a better perception of the listeners.

Features of training on video courses

For beginners, a video course is an exciting movie because studying at home without the direct participation of a teacher, group, or external control is a new experience for many. For information to be stored in memory and have the opportunity to turn into real skills and knowledge, it is important to approach learning and self-education properly.

Watching a video course has several features distinguishing it from cinema and regular video.

Technical side

A video tutorial is a recording with a certain resolution, therefore:

1. You should not watch a screen recording at a lower resolution than a video – fine details such as text, icons, and thumbnails will be invisible due to blurring.
2. Watch the lessons on the big screen – small details will not be visible on the small one.

The screen resolution of a FullHD smartphone (1920*1080px) corresponds to a video shot with a modern camera, but with a smartphone diagonal of 6 inches, it does not make sense – small details of graphics and text will not be visible on the screen. Use a laptop, computer monitor, or large-screen TV to study video courses.

When you are about to download a video course, pay attention to the note, which usually indicates in what format the videos were shot and whether they are suitable for viewing from a smartphone screen. This is possible mainly in cases where the speaker broadcasts in words with minimal use of additional materials on the screen of his computer, and teaching aids are offered to students on the personal account of the platform.

Key qualities

Self-education, like telecommuting, is a new way of gaining knowledge and professions that people have yet to be taught. So, many do not cope with independent learning, being in their own homes in an appropriate environment.

The beauty of video tutorials is that you can watch them anywhere, and two skills are important for this:

• The ability to self-organize and move away from what is happening to focus on the subject.
• The ability to show perseverance and self-discipline, viewing lessons sequentially at a given frequency, not missing classes, and not putting it off indefinitely.

Video tutorials in courses for self-study are not entertainment but a system that, with the proper approach, should lead to a result, namely, to the development of some skills or knowledge. With self-discipline, this can be achieved; it is necessary to make efforts so that the result is significant and of high quality.

Due to a lack of discipline and fading interest, students often abandon free courses. Invest only time in them; it reduces the value of the product. Paid programs are less often left halfway: only 20% of online schools noted that 70-100% of students make it to the end of the program, and the industry average is about 60%.

Whether a student reaches the end of the program is influenced by the perseverance and motivation of the student, as well as the quality of the material and its presentation, but this is another matter.

What can you learn from video courses?

Demand for online education creates supply. For this reason, knowledge providers offer a wide range of professions that can be learned remotely:

• programming of varying complexity;
• computer graphics;
• Internet marketing;
• design;
• management;
• business analytics;
• trading;
• process, team, and business management;
• foreign languages;
• customer acquisition;
• confectionery;
• makeup;
• artistic professions;
• copywriting, SMM, SEO;
• website development;
• video editing and animation;
• sewing, etc.

You need to understand that, in most cases, a video course is an accelerated training program that will not replace the process of acquiring a full-fledged profession at a university or college. This is professional retraining; therefore, specialties requiring high qualifications should be taught differently. The listed professions are generalized; you can find training with a subsection and a narrow specialization for each.

Video courses 1C, AutoCAD, Corel Draw, and other specialized programs are in demand – companies often purchase them to train employees on the ground without going to training centers.

Preparing for the Unified State Examination is another area of ​​video lessons that is interesting for schoolchildren when preparing for exams. They are much cheaper than working with a tutor; on the Web, you can download these video courses for free and watch them at any convenient time, free from classes and personal affairs.

Video courses in English and other languages ​​are the most common learning method. Profile programs and applications are built on lecture and exercise recordings available for study without reference to time.

Expectant mothers will appreciate access to video lessons, studying the topic of childbirth and caring for a baby; accomplished parents are interested in learning lessons on education and managing emotions. This is also not a professional profile, but with the right choice of speaker and program, you can gain the valuable knowledge necessary in life.

Video course on traffic rules – a help to training in a driving school. Especially for those not present at the theory in person or attending classes but need more clarification on the rules and additional explanation. Video lessons can be watched even on a smartphone for free, without registration and SMS.

One of the new areas of video lessons is cynology. It turns out that it is possible to learn dog training without leaving home. You can pick up an online course to solve problems with different pets.

All the topics on which you can find video courses cannot be listed in this material – today, you can learn many things because there is a demand for them. For this reason, you can search for the desired topic in the browser and find out if educational programs exist. Video courses can be downloaded on torrent or educational sites.

How to learn from video tutorials: a quick guide

It is impossible to derive a single formula for learning from video lessons due to the specifics of different topics and learning algorithms. So, for game developers, the sequence of actions is one, for artists – another for studying the rules of the road – the third.

We have deduced several general recommendations that are universal for working with video tutorials of any specialization:

1. Set a goal for the lesson. The topic is known to you. Based on it, determine what you want to learn. For example, “what do I want to know today?”, “How will this information be useful to me?” With these questions, you will tune your brain to the target work and be manageable watching a video with a designated topic. Reminding yourself of the purpose of the entire video course is also helpful – it reduces the risk of dropping the program halfway through due to a lack of motivation and self-discipline.
2. Keep an outline. The brain absorbs what we write by hand in the form of new neural connections better than when reading a ready-made summary. In addition, the written abstracts help to quickly restore in memory the logical chains that sounded during the narration during the notes.
3. Follow the teacher’s instructions exactly to understand the algorithm of his reasoning and, therefore, the answer to a question or solution of a similar type of problem. If you don’t catch the algorithm when viewing, review the lesson, make a structural outline, or draw a flowchart for clarity.
4. Ask the teacher or curators questions in the chat or the feedback form on the learning platform. This helps to immediately close the gaps in understanding the topic, distract and better remember the material.
5. Practice your homework – this helps consolidate the material in practice.
6. At the end of watching the lesson, correlate the knowledge gained with the goals set and ask yourself: was everything clear? Is it possible to take this knowledge to work?

If necessary, watch the lessons several times and rewind the video to listen again in incomprehensible places; this is especially useful in tutorials when you need to repeat after the lecturer exactly or by analogy.

To watch the video course from scratch, we recommend preparing the following:

• Get a workbook if the course does not include printed material.
• Create a training schedule: designate the time of classes, and build a daily schedule based on it.
• Set aside every day for learning. If the lessons are not held daily, during the absences, look into the chat or notes to refresh the material covered in your memory and be “in the flow” for at least 10 minutes.
• Time management will help you organize yourself. Set time for uninterrupted activity and rest using Pomodoro-type timing programs. The best option for alternation: 30-40 minutes for a lesson without distraction and 5-10 minutes for rest.
• Translate into your language what needs to be clarified. Try to explain to a friend, a reflection in a mirror, or a pet a question, but in your own words – this way, you will build the answer to it in your way without buzzwords. They were able to explain – which means that they learned the material well.

Often, the need for more attention to the organization of the educational process reduces the quality of education. For this reason, time management, note-taking, and material consolidation should be given special attention.

These services will help you learn.

These tools will help organize a self-educational educational process :

1. Online calendars (for example, Google Calendar ) where you can post your class schedule and other things, so you don’t miss anything.
2. Note-taking services. The most popular ones are Google Keep, Trello, and Evernote. These offline time management programs are also suitable for posting a schedule and marking completed tasks and events. You can place audio files, scans, and documents in them, take notes and synchronize data between the devices on which you study for quick access.
3. Pomodoro is a personal time management service that helps you plan when to complete individual tasks.
4. A program for compiling virtual notes MindMup in the form of flowcharts and associative chains. This tool will help you replace your paper notes.
5. It is convenient to make electronic notes in Google Docs; they will always be at hand.

Studying video courses in 2022 is an actual way to get new professions and master skills. Be prepared to study hard, and don’t be afraid to make mistakes – that’s also part of the learning process.

Home tasks

To complete the full video course effectively, not to quit halfway, but to transform the information into practice, it is necessary to do homework. It’s good if a workbook is attached to the video lessons – it’s more interesting to study in it. The student must fill in the tables and write key points, observations, and dynamics.

Completing tasks helps consolidate the material, especially if no feedback is provided during training. The need to record text responses can be used as a control, testing, and survey. If this is a business course, the task may be to analyze the case, identify errors in the strategy, and write a business plan. The material for studying foreign languages ​​may include writing a mini-story or a couple of sentences for artistic profiles – to create something: a drawing, a presentation, a photo or video, etc.

Interestingly, the lack of homework almost halved student satisfaction with the final results of the video course.

Summary

Video courses are an alternative to long-term training in new professions and a way to gain structured knowledge. These lessons are recorded in a certain sequence that can be watched at any convenient time on a computer, smartphone, or tablet without being tied to any place, which is very convenient and determines the format’s popularity.

To gain high-quality knowledge, follow simple rules:

• Be diligent and consistent.
• Take notes and do homework responsibly, and most importantly.
• Remember why you are studying to maintain motivation.

To better master the skills necessary for self-study on any topic and in different formats, you will learn about interesting and effective ways to learn quickly, efficiently, and efficiently. The development of the cognitive abilities of the brain also contributes to this – the better it works, the more interesting the study and the better the result.