Short Screencasts
Record short screencasts with narration over visuals. Mayer: images plus voice outperforms text-heavy slides. Keep each video to one idea. Brevity beats completeness every time.
The strategy, as published
Exactly as it appears on the card
Part of Multimedia & Dual Coding in 05 Explanations & Modelling, where it sits alongside its neighbouring strategies, the infographic and the thinking for the whole area.
Why you might use it
The problem it may help with
A long recorded explanation is easy to make and hard to use. Mayer's evidence points at images plus voice outperforming text-heavy slides, and the card adds the discipline: one idea per video, because brevity beats completeness.
Completeness is what the whole library is for. Each clip only has to do one job.
What it might look like
One version of it, in a classroom
A maths teacher records one screencast on expanding a single bracket: the working shown on screen, the voice narrating over it, nothing else. The next idea, a second bracket, gets its own separate recording.
Try it
A way to begin
Record one short screencast this week on the single idea you are asked to repeat most often.
What to notice
Reading what happens
- Which clips get replayed, and where pupils pause them.
- Whether the repeat explanations that prompted the recording actually reduce.
Things to think about
Before and while you use it
- One idea per video is the whole discipline; when a recording starts needing chapters, it is several videos.
- These are supplements to your live explanation, not a substitute for it; the strand is firm on that distinction.
- How short is short is your call to make; the reason to keep making it is working memory. It's narrow, and every extra idea in a video competes for the space the first one needs. When in doubt, split the recording.
Technology second
Where technology fits
The approved screen recording tool in your setting is all this needs: record the screen, narrate over it, share through your usual platform. Keep the design rules from the rest of the strand inside the recording too: minimal text, one clear visual, the voice doing the explaining.
The wider thinking
Where the evidence sits
Mayer's multimedia research underpins both halves of the card: the choice of narrated visuals and the case for keeping each segment small. The card’s attribution stands as published: Mayer.
The fuller picture, sources included, is in further reading and evidence for Explanations & Modelling.
Keep exploring
Where next?
Back to this strategy in 05 Explanations & Modelling, across to what you're trying to improve, or into all 144 at once.
Want to take this further?
Support is available
Pedagogy First gives you a starting point. If you want support exploring how approaches like this can work across your school, trust or professional learning programme, that work is available.