interactive video explained

Why is GmPly a popular interactive video platform?

An interactive video at its simplest is multimedia that allows viewers to engage with the content they see. It is the latest and most advanced of this genre on GmPly. You can click here to see the features of GmPly or click here to view interactive video demos right away.

In a classic video, you know as a viewer that you have a passive role. The footage is edited with a definite beginning and an end, and you watch it. With a great script and a crew of great director and actors, it turns into a movie that we spend hours in front of. But what about the world of education?

Educational Design Today (Old-Generation)

Today, only 3 out of 10 people complete an online training course prepared with old-generation video content. Moreover, you are not entirely sure whether these three people completed the training. For the same reason, learners take a test after each training video, much like what they are accustomed to doing at an in-class learning. With the little data they have, learning&development specialists would then evaluate whether the employee took in the information during the class or in front of their screen—a complete reflection of the old-generation educational design to the present.

A typical example would be;

Imagine a retail sales training that consists of segments such as welcoming a customer, product recommendation, cross/up-selling, and sales closing.

In an old-generation video training, the employee gets a post-course score of 70 points, but the score alone does not help to measure where they got/lost points. Therefore, if you needed to adjust the video later, you would be left to deal with the entire video which was previously saved and uploaded as a single file.

Interactive Video (First-generation solutions)

As a response to that, the use of interactive video has gained popularity in the last 5-6 years.

Almost all of these early-stage solutions seem to be designed by software developers. It's as if they prioritized software development above the appropriate educational design.

For example, almost all of the 1st generation interactive video solutions in the industry work on "time-jump," a methodology where interactions with the content let the user skip or jump to a time code on a single video piece. Here is how time-jump functions: for example, you put a selection menu in the 3rd minute of a 15-minute video. Then, the video "time-jumps" on the timeline to the 5th, 9th, or 13th minute. Unfortunately, this methodology does not cope well with the educational design.

What are the common problems of First-generation (legacy) interactive video platforms?

• Redoing the whole work: Every time you need to change something in a time-jump video, you would redo the entire piece. For example, you had to shorten your 15-minute video, which is now 11 minutes long. Your old menu would still refer to the 13th minute since a single piece of footage is used in the older generation interactive video systems. But it does not exist anymore. So you have to go to the original menu and correct the time timeline.

• You need to montage the entire video: Suppose you have a time-jump video of 15-minutes in length, which is a single-piece footage. If you needed to change two minutes, you would still have to edit the entire video, render, and upload it. Eventually, you will have to spend long hours.

• They are not bandwidth friendly: Assume you run a course with an old generation interactive video tool; say there is a massive 35-minute-long video. The size of your video should be at least 300 - 400 MBs. You might jump from one time reference to another and skip 10 minutes. Maybe you will leave the training and pick it up later from a topic on 30th minute? On a regular interactive video training, you would still have the player download data. Imagine using that in your company network. You will have thousands of MBs of imagery downloaded but never watched.

• They are not mobile-first: 68% of the time your employees use their mobile devices for training courses. Older generation structures however, were produced primarily for computers and later adapted for mobile devices.

• Not designed for education: Initially designed for marketing purposes, most of the interactive video tools do not include native user management and reporting systems; they sell such features separately. If you visit most of their websites, you'll see examples of social media projects on marketing and purchasing.

  Again, education is no focal point; it is just another domain to sell to.

GmPly represents the latest generation of interactive video-aided learning platform.

First of all, we are not a software company. We provide educational solutions. When we first designed GmPly, we didn't start with the software first. We examined the current educational design and its problems. We worked on what kind of a solution and training design is needed to overcome those problems and achieve desired goals. After determining the design, language, and approach, we designed the software on which the design could run. That's why GmPly stands before us as a new-gen educational solution.

Now let's take a look at how we make those problems disappear at GmPly;

• You edit only where you want the change: If any video needs changes, you only change the relevant scene. This happens within minutes. Therefore, during a video montage, you change only parts where you need it to change.

• You can design personalized courses: Thanks to the Intelligent Forwarding feature available only on GmPly, the interactive videos you make with GmPly become smart. Instead of ending-starting a video, now with the training's decision node points, one can move along the video timeline via a simple click of a button. Furthermore, the course can interpret the person's level and take them through predefined paths. Thus, everyone receives the same training link but can get a personalized education.

• GmPly is modular and does not use time-jumps: you can think of your training as a structure made of post-its or legos. As a result, tasks such as modification, cloning, and redoing videos are effortless.

• Bandwidth friendly : Only the watched videos/scenes are loaded. Parts that you haven't watched yet, are not downloaded unnecessarily. Compared to other systems, it saves you three times more internet quota.

• No takedowns are needed: A course can be edited on GmPly even if it's live.

• Mobile-first : GmPly was designed for mobile devices in mind. It also works fine on a PC or a tablet.

• No app needed: You don't need to install anything to watch GmPly courses. It works smoothly on any device with a screen and HTML5 browser support.

• Training continues from where it left off: Even if you left your computer at the office, you can continue your training on the go with your mobile phone and complete it on a tablet at home. GmPly remembers where you left off, and even if you log in from a different device (or from within an LMS), the course will continue where it left off.

• SCORM+ : It is now straightforward to update Scorm-based trainings with SCORM+. For detailed information on this subject, please click here.

• Integrated user management and reporting system: Since GmPly is designed and produced exclusively for corporate trainings, it includes an integrated user management and reporting system.

• Cross Tabulation feature: You can create cross-tabulations thanks to this unique feature. You can make complex queries: Example: highlight those who replied to the first question with an A, a C or D to the second question, and a D to the fifth. Based on this capability, you can develop the most sophisticated design that can provide results you cannot achieve in any other system.

  Next-Gen educational design and ecosystem that always stands by your side

No doubt, the most crucial value-adds of GmPly is the educational design language it offers, as well as its technological developments. We mentioned that we are not a software company: our innovation is based on educational design first, and on the technology second.

In this regard, GmPly takes you to the forefront of next-generation education design and meets your L&D team's needs from a single point. You can click here to learn about it.