Pull quote: “I’ve become increasingly convinced that screencasts are not the right fit for teaching people how to use online databases. It’s very difficult while watching a video to work with a database. It’s also difficult to scan for just what content one needs when they are actually using the database. Lori Mestre’s study on learning styles and learning objects confirmed my suspicions when she found that students using a static HTML tutorial were better able to do database searching than a group that watched a Camtasia screencast because they could go back and forth between the tutorial and the database and practice what they were learning while they were learning.” - Stephen le Francoeur

I wish this made me feel vindicated, but it just makes me angry. - Meg V. Meg

How come angry? - Marie

Because I hate video tutorials so effing much (because I can skim and ctrl+F much faster than someone can talk, and because I can't process/tolerate listening to recordings of people talking), and they're terrible for people with impaired hearing, and you can't even watch them at public terminals unless you remembered to bring headphones in case you needed to watch a stupid video tutorial. And because even if these reasons weren't sufficient (alone or in aggregate), couldn't someone have done this study before seemingly everything explanatory on the internet was converted into a video tutorial? It feels like my time has been wasted and my goodwill exhausted because "yay shiny thing...haha, whoops!" /rant - Meg V. Meg

But we are not the same as all our users, correct? Why do some library videos get hundreds / thousands of views? To exclude other explanatory formats is a mistake, but I think quick video demos have a place (always closed captioned of course). At least until more than one study proves otherwise. Also worth considering : SEO gains from using YouTube for such content. - JffKrlsn from Android

They get hundreds/thousands of views because you have to watch them over and over because you can't ctrl+F on them and you can't remember where the important part was? And because you can't print them out, so you have to keep watching them? How many quick video demos have you seen that are closed captioned? It would definitely be one thing if there were multiple formats available for help, it just seems like this one has pushed everything else out right now. - Meg V. Meg