In the chapter two, the words have been mentioned that “Specific multimedia can be used to help people learn specific kinds of information.”(Lawrence J. Najjar, 1996) How to help people learn with videos and what are the interactions with videos presented from
75 baking learners? These will be discussed in the following. The content which video usually provides and the advantages as well as disadvantages were already given in the findings of the chapter four. We will discuss the interactions from the responses of emails and interviewees’ data only.
5.3.1 Videos are Important for Procedure Learning and Ideas Inspiration
Baking learners tend to learn through videos when learning elements are accompanied with successive concept. In the interviews, some of them expressed they could not live without videos with regard to baking learning.
Participant 1: “When I want to do certain kinds of bake, I would find videos firstly by searching online. Video is the most helpful learning method to me.” “If I find the demonstration is too quick to understand, I would search the other videos.” “If unluckily, there are no videos suitable for me, I could only search others’ blogs.”
The other baking learners tend to find new baking ideas through searching videos. One baking learners gets use to searching and watching baking video during her leisure time in order to supply her skill and knowledge from baking classes, books, as well as blogs. She usually types the Chinese keywords into searching bar and utilizes the recommendations or related video lists to find the right English video resources.
In the case of watching baking videos of foreign language, she is used to watching the visual motions only. Sometimes it is no need to listen to the narrations or watch the captions.
She gets used to watching dynamic images of baking looks or materials or gestures and then refers to the books or blogs to get the words information from recipe.
Participant 4: “Videos are good ways to learn, but they still lack of static information.”
Truly, owing to the above reason, the other baking learners find that searching others’
blog and baking books are the better ways to learn the fragmental knowledge rather than
76 videos. The fragmental knowledge is like the answer of some small questions.
Some baking classes provide baking teaching process with official videos in class to learners, but none of the interviewees had reviewed that after class. One interviewee said:
Participant 6: “The volume of the videos is large. Often teachers shared it with a disk or a link or a usb and asked us to copy the files in each own computers. I cannot remember where I saved them after a long time from files sharing. Also, videos is helpful to novice learners but not for me, as a baker with more skilled and experiences.”
Furthermore, if the names or instructions or displaying images in video appealed to baking learners while they searched on the Internet, they would click the video to see whether it is interesting or not. Even the one who regards video as the time wasting and unhelpful for learning method do the same. Photos and videos of the finished baking products are easy to catch the learners’ attention, make click into it to find more, and raise their motivation to do that kind of baking as long as the static image is beautiful.
5.3.2 Learning through Videos Interchanging Activities is not Easy
In fact, the baking learners’ actions with videos we learned from interviews have no actively sharing video experiences. Only one who responds from email has recorded lots of baking videos and shared them in her blogs; because as a baking teacher, it is more convenient to teach baking if students had seen the certain process before class.
Respondent 1: “I am used to recording the baking process while practicing before class, especially I know which process is basic or specific for every baker to know, or complicated and hard to learn. Although the learning effectiveness might be better if my students previewed the videos with introduction, I still prefer sharing and recording baking procedure by photos. Because most of the photos can be shot by myself, but all of the videos needed to record by others help. Sometimes I need to ask a helper to pause DV owing to the waiting or preparing time. Besides, a good baking teaching video requires many preceding preparations
77 and editing after recording.”
Respondent 1: “In fact, videos require while learning a new concept, but most of time for experienced baking learners, instructing photos and words are enough.”
But in our literature reviews, all discussions indicated that videos have the potentials to improve learning activities and bring learning and sharing environment better, not only of its characteristics of media but also of the age of positively online sharing environment. “Even at a duration of 3-5 minutes, the videos can certainly be effective learning vehicles and highly informative.”(Paul Hyde, 2008) Owing to the belief that videos are pervasive, dynamic content providers, and easy to access online, we reviewed and then organized our findings as well as discussions in the chapter four and the former words in this chapter, and will provide some implications for designers and developers who want to know more know-how about providing the suitable learning videos environment for users to learn.