Video Module For Elected Officials

Learning Solution

A 30-minute video module teaching California elected officials strategies for structuring and marketing municipal debt

Client

The California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission (CDIAC), 2023

Skills & Tools Used

ADDIE, storyboarding, project management, editing

Stakeholder Feedback

“This has been a multi-year project with a panel of very involved SMEs. Faith joined the project for the sixth module in an 8-module curriculum. I was very impressed with the effort she made to catch up on the body of work that had already been completed, and to understand how her work fit into the big picture. She came in as an immediate contributor.

“From a bold round of revisions to the client-provided draft script, to multiple iterations on the storyboards, to working with the motion artist, Faith took on a sense of ownership and applied the best of her skills to making the client’s goals a reality while also creating an engaging experience for the intended learners. I have appreciated her professionalism and really enjoyed working with her.”

Kerrie Dunn, Director of Instructional Design, APS

Project Story

The Challenge

Design a module to instruct a wide variety of learners while also utilizing assets from previous modules to maintain a consistent instructional experience.

My Role

Lead designer: I translated the client-provided script into visuals, creating video storyboards. I met weekly with the clients/SMEs to incorporate their feedback into new draft iterations, handed off the finished storyboards to an animator, and managed incorporation of client feedback into the final product.

The Solution

The topic, marketing and structuring strategies for municipal debt issuance, is particularly abstract. To decrease the cognitive load of the learners I advocated with the client to chunk the videos and insert the assessment questions in between these chunks.

Process Details

Click on images to zoom in.

Agile Iterations

Working off a script provided by the SMEs, I created storyboards in PowerPoint. I met weekly with the SMEs to refine these prototypes until they were ready to send to the animator.

Motion Graphic Support

When developing the storyboards I included production instructions (in the Notes field in the screenshot) for the animator so he would have the information needed to begin animating as soon as the storyboards were handed to him.

Project Management

Project management was a large part of my role on this project, especially tracking changes requested by the client and following through to ensure they were made in the following iterations.

Managing Cognitive Load

Previously, modules in this series have been formatted as two or three video segments each followed by a few assessment questions.  The module I worked on was especially lengthy, with two videos clocking in at 29 minutes total.  Each video was in the range of 13-15 minutes long.  Research has shown that learner engagement begins to decline when instructional videos are longer than about 6 minutes.  With this in mind I advocated for the idea of dividing the two videos into smaller chunks, each followed by the single assessment question that related to the preceding material.

Assessment as engagement

When relevant assessment questions immediately follow shorter videos, reflecting on the question helps keep learners engaged.

The Finished Product

The full module, Module 6: Marketing and Structuring Strategies for a Win-Win Debt Issuance, is hosted on the CDIAC education portal which requires a free registration to enter.

Here is the first video segment (of eight) for reference.

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