Whether you’re a corporate trainer or e-learning content creator, you can’t afford to deliver dry facts in your e-learning videos. Your videos need to evoke emotions if you want your learners to retain facts and recall them.
If a video contains a story with interesting characters and a plot that learners identify with, they are likely to feel emotions like curiosity and empathy. They will pay more attention to find out what is going to happen and are likely to retain the facts for longer.
The human brain is wired to respond to emotion. In e-learning where learners face many distractions and drop-off rates are high, you need to embed emotion in video content to drive engagement and improve course completion rates.
The neuroscience of emotion and memory in e-learning
Applying scientific insights about how learners learn best creates a more effective learning experience. When you know how the brains of learners process, retain, and retrieve information you are able to create educational videos that resonate with them on a deeper level.
The brain continuously evaluates what information it needs to remember. It is naturally wired to forget information that isn’t relevant and discard what it doesn’t use.
Imaging studies show how the amygdala in the brain activates when video material arouses the emotions. The hippocampus converts short-term information into long-term storage. As an e-learning provider you want to cultivate long-term retention of information.
- Emotional design in e-learning helps neural systems to prioritize certain information. This selective attention helps learners to focus on and encode key information.
- When memories are embedded in a story that evokes emotion, they are more likely to stick. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a positive or negative emotion. The release of certain hormones that accompany the emotions activate memory formation and retention.
- Emotions are able to increase learner motivation. They can inspire them and get them to take action. This makes them more likely to persist and complete an e-learning course.
As an e-learning provider, creating emotional learning videos helps you to achieve these benefits. Using the right video hosting platform enables you to deliver high-quality videos with interactive, storytelling features to learners.
How visuals, music, and storytelling evoke emotional responses
Visuals, such as smiling faces, create an emotional response. Music offers a great way to evoke emotion. Use visuals, music and storytelling in a coherent way and you have the best tools for making emotive videos.
Visuals
- Human faces help to evoke an emotional connection. This is why using video messaging is more effective when relating to learners than just sending them texts.
- When learners see someone in a relatable situation and recognize an emotion, it causes them to ‘lean in’ and identify with the person.
- Seeing contextual scenes and real-world scenarios mentally maps content to the learners’ own lives and increases relevance and emotional engagement.
- Visual patterns of storytelling where a learner sees a problem and the eventual solution offers moments of suspense and discovery.
- Colors, light, movement create a certain visual style, which is important when it comes to evoking emotions. Warm colors are able to invoke very different emotions than dark, cool colors. Fast movements help to convey a sense of urgency, whereas slow movements are calming. Close-up shots create a sense of intimacy.
2. Music
Some key ways to use music include:
- Use background music to reflect the emotional tone of a scene. This helps to synchronize the emotions of the learner with the message.
- Use sound effects and pacing to cue certain emotional responses such as surprise or suspense.
- Music can rise in tempo as tension in a video grows until it eventually reaches a climax. This helps to immerse viewers and anchor memory.
3. Storytelling
Video storytelling in education is one of the most potent vehicles for emotion. Stories create context and meaning so learners don’t just receive isolated information. They see how the information applies to and plays out in a real-world context.
Stories have characters, stakes, conflict, and resolution. They map directly to the emotional arcs humans experience.
A good story is likely to stimulate curiosity and make learners carry on watching a video to see what happens next.
When learners empathize with a character in a story, they become emotionally invested. They continue to pay attention to see what happens to the character.
A visual scene and gentle music will help to create the right context and mood from the start. Introduce a character and use the music to build the tension as you introduce the problem. Make sure that the learning concept fits seamlessly with your story. At the end of the video, learners should feel a sense of resolution and you should incorporate a call to action.
Examples of emotional learning moments that boost retention
Many areas of the brain process facts and emotions at the same time. As an e-learning provider, it makes sense to take advantage of the power of emotions to help convey facts. How do you create emotional learning moments?
Example 1- A near-miss story
A near-miss story featuring a manager who misses an important deadline will create empathy in learners who feel it could have been them in this situation. They see the consequences, such as customers complaining and team morale dropping. The video then pivots to how the right processes prevent that scenario. It works because the learners feel the anxiety and want to avoid the same fate. The memory of the solution becomes embedded in a story format that they will recall when they face a similar risk.
Example 2 – A personal transformation story
Everyone loves a personal transformation story. A video could tell a story of a sales rep lacking in confidence and feeling anxious about making sales. Once he adopts certain strategies and techniques, he gradually manages to build his confidence and become a good salesman. This narrative arc of struggle, growth, and success taps into emotions such as hope and pride. Embedding sales techniques into a human story makes them more relevant and memorable.
Example 3 – A story with high emotional stakes
A personal story about an employee who suffered an injury due to negligence shows how following the right procedures is able to prevent major harm. This shows real-life consequences that will help learners to remember the procedures in the context of the story. They will remember this better than a bullet list of precautions.
Example 4 – Using curiosity and surprise
A video could show a marketing team ignoring user feedback and the consequences of this. Viewers anticipate the disaster of a new product launch failing. This activates their attention systems because they sense what’s coming. When the solution to prevent this is revealed, the brain flags it as important.
Example 5 – Personalized learning
Giving learners more control over their learning makes them more motivated. Branching into a first-person learning experience could lead to a series of relevant role-playing simulations that engage their emotions.
Learners learn in different ways and some may prefer to watch the live streaming of a webinar, while others may want to watch it later once you save it as video-on-demand (VOD).
Example 6 – Timely feedback
If you offer timely feedback, it creates a stronger emotional link between effort and achievement. When learners have to select a multiple-choice answer and immediately see whether it’s right or wrong and why, the lack of delay reinforces learning.
When you use the Cincopa video hosting platform, you will be able to produce and distribute high-quality videos that resonate with learners. It also offers engagement analytics so you can track what truly connects with them. This gives you the insights you need to improve their emotional engagement with your videos.
Conclusion – Creating videos that move learners and motivate action
Emotional engagement in e-learning is a top priority today as it moves learners and motivates them. Emotion is like a bridge between cognitive engagement and actual transformation. When they feel emotion, learners care about the content and remember it. Facts and concepts gain emotional weight when they appear in the context of a story. Signing up for a free trial on Cincopa home page gives you the opportunity to see how you are able to create and deliver videos that resonate emotionally with learners and help them to retain and recall information.
