The power of video learning

Video is such a powerful way of sharing knowledge, says Martin Baker in this short interview with Learning News. Martin, founder and CEO of the Clear Lessons video learning library and the Clear Lessons Foundation, talks about his plans for creating free video learning content for charities in partnership with Costa Coffee, River Island, Aviva and John Lewis.

“Clear Lessons is a video series that we’ve created. We’ve got over 500 videos specifically on leadership, they’re all just a few minutes long”

One of the things that we wanted to do was look at how people learn at home. We’re using YouTube for almost everything so we’ve tried to replicate the way we learn at home in the office environment.

The people that we’re filming are from big organisations and they’re sharing their experience sharing their knowledge talking about things they’re passionate about.

Video is a great way for us to learn, it’s a great way for us to take in information.

When I first started in this industry, back in about 1992, the biggest revenue generating part of the business was sending out VHS videos on a two to three day hire. Finally we’ve got the technology to be able to deliver video in the same level of quality as we were doing 20 to 30 years ago!

There’s a piece of research a couple of years ago which looked at how managers learn and the top two places that managers go to learn first of all is Google and YouTube, and secondly it’s asking their colleagues and peers. What we’ve tried to do is encapsulate both of those in a video solution.

We’ve just scoped out two more series that we think are going to be really relevant within the third sector. The first one is called the digital series and the second one is called the coaching series.

The digital series is something that we’re creating because we sponsored a report last year looking at the state of the nation in terms of everything digital and there are massive gaps. If you use the term digital transformation to anybody who isn’t head of digital in an organisation they just give you this glazed look.

We’re working with Aviva, River Island, Costa and John Lewis and they’re helping us scope the new series. Then what we’ll do is we’ll go back into their organisations to film their people to provide us with the content.”

Find out more about our plans to create more content for the Clear Lessons Foundation on our website here.