New ways to think about university course page videos

The University of Kent uses course videos in a way I haven’t seen before. Each time you load a course page, a video slides in from the top right giving you a concise overview. Nothing that special, but what I really like is that it allows these videos to be produced for a specific point in a user’s journey, keeping the content relevant. A simple idea executed well.

Nathan Monk
Hello, and welcome to Most Clicked. Now, before we get into today’s show, if you like today’s content, please like this video. And if you like our content overall, please do hit the subscribe button. Okay, so today’s show is all about course pages again, in particular University of Kent’s course pages. So, Kyle, what’s the story?

Kyle Campbell
Hey Nath, so, I’m kind of going on the course page kick at the moment. I fell out of love with them like a few years ago, but you know, I’ve started to get back into them again. So, University of Kent’s course pages, really nice design, you know, as a pretty standard thing to say now, but the thing that really caught my attention was how they use video on the page. And when you load this page, you’ll see this little video here, the taller header area, slide in from the right there. And usually, I always feel like things that interrupt a user’s experience are sometimes negative. But for this, I actually think it’s a really good use of video.

A couple of reasons, one, it actually allows you to have a bit of context around the content you put in the video. So if you know that a video is going to slide in from the top here, when the page loads, you know, generally that needs to be a sort of introduction to the course and give an overview of it. And I can see a couple of the pages, they have designed the content to fit into that sort of space, so it feels quite well thought out. The other thing is usually when you start playing these things, they can start playing in the background. So if you’re interested in finding other content on the page, you can have a narrative, almost giving you a sort of voiceover in a bit wider context, the sort of content you’re reading. And so overall, you know, it’s a really basic thing, but I think it works really well.

And this is in juxtaposition to what normally happens on course pages where you have videos on them, but they’re usually in multiple locations, and they sort of pop up from time, you’re just not sure what to expect. But this felt really well thought out. And I haven’t really seen it before and the university course page. So I’m interested to hear what you think. And if you have come across something similar in the past,

Nathan Monk
I mean, we at SMILE, we’ve worked on a number of different course page projects, and they either suffer from two things. One is having no video. The other is having, oh, hey, we’ve got 14 videos we’d like to put on this page, please. And the thing that I really liked with, with the example there from Kent, is the kind of considered content approach to video.

And like you say, having a single video that can permeate that users experience as they kind of scroll down the page like say with the audio and these are the things that I don’t think many people consider is that the post-play button, and like post play, yeah, they might scroll and the audio is there and it’s really important and when I did work with one client now they were talking a lot about the read, watch, listen to approach and how you should be attacking each one of those kinds of senses with the content.

So I quite like that approach. I do really like the Kent example. We’ve worked on, we have worked shameless plug we’ve worked on projects, though, where we’ve done very similarly to this. I know that when we worked on the University of Sunderland website, many many moons ago, must be six, maybe even seven years ago now. And we promoted video as a big part of that redesign and said each course should have a video. I think now they’ve actually gone to having a carousel of videos. But here you can see one actually looks so you’ve got the overview there with the embedded YouTube video for you to kind of watch the overview of the course page. But like you say, I don’t think that it’s necessarily a unique idea. But I think the power of it is in the execution. It’s all about, dares I say, content design.

Kyle Campbell
Yeah, and I think it’s very easy to kind of carried away with trends, isn’t it, and I think video has been like a trend for the last 10 years. Like every year is like video, video, video and you’re right sometimes it ends up with like we’re gonna put 12 videos on this single page. Normally doesn’t happen with course pages but you have seen the pages I’m talking about. So to actually see the medium be considered and how it can be used. Because video isn’t that innovative, but you know how you use it is that that differentiator, and I’d love to see more unis doing something like that just a nice sort of audio assistant that follows you down the page or just gives you that overview and being sympathetic to what the user needs at that point, rather than just bludgeon them over the head with like, a grid layout with like, 12 videos on it, which is too much.

Nathan Monk
And there’s nothing worse than that, we sometimes will get requests of like, hey, we want to replicate YouTube on our website, and they’ll just give you a bunch of and like no, that’s YouTube, you can just do that on YouTube. And instead, I think there are so many more interesting and interactive experiments that universities could be looking at. And like you said there about, you know, as you scroll down the video kind of being your assistant, well, I see as you scroll down the page, there are a number of different videos and that kind of, hey, we’ve got 14 videos, but there’s perhaps kind of that person narrating your journey down the page, and they could autoplay and maybe that could be used instead of the images and maybe it could be embedded as part of the images.

I think there are just so many different uses of video way beyond the hey, let’s cut a two and a half minute video together. And I know what that’s done, it’s easy, it’s the expected, it’s in everybody’s wheelhouse to kind of do. But I just think that video represents this incredible opportunity to engage with the person at the other end of the screen. And sometimes it’s not taken full advantage of. We spoke about in a couple of episodes back TikTok and how there are embeds for TikTok and I know that I like viewing it off-platform and all that sort of stuff. But again, that whole vertical video thing is really underutilised on website experiences, still. Even though in most tenders for a university website, you will see “Over 50% of our users are on mobiles. So we need to put them first.” So yeah, as I say, I think it’s an under-explored avenue.

Kyle Campbell
I remember when a vertical video was viewed as a negative. Especially when that format was first emerging. And I remember, I can’t remember the channel, I think it was called Hat n’ Boots or something. It was funny. They did like an attack on vertical video. And I just look back at that video, which was published probably in 2013 and I think, wow, you know, called that wrong? So yeah, you’re right. It’s not quite, still not quite accepted yet in terms of like, tenders, or whatever. But you know, the trend is there.

Nathan Monk
It’s time in place, though, as well, right? I’m the first one that, I get annoyed, I get annoyed when my wife films in like vertical format versus landscape. And that’s the kind of old person in me, but, you know, at the same time I was, I was doing some video editing bizarrely, the past couple of days. And in there, there are all these guides, and one of the guides now is a vertical portrait guide so that if you shoot in landscape, you’ll know which bit of it is for the portrait. So I think it’s like it’s inescapable. But also, you’ve got to design your content for the right audience in the right place at the right time.

And I think what Kent has done really well here to bring it back to what Kent has done is that they’ve kind of identified that someone is going to be on that page at that moment, and they’re providing content to do that. Could they go further with that? Yeah, they probably could. But there are other places of university websites or indeed other university websites period, where different formats of video could really work.

Again, I call back to my days with Sunderland, I remember when we were doing their Choose Sunderland page, we had a load of very short like three/four-second videos that were square aspect ratio and had them in this kind of parallax floaty thing. And you know, it worked really well it didn’t feel like an immersive kind of BBC experience video that we were asking people to sit forward and engage with the two and a half minutes. So yeah, I think this basically what I think I’m trying to say is content and design work so in tandem with one another that when you are creating these types of experiences, the two should be considered at the same time rather than as separated things.

Kyle Campbell
Yeah 100% I couldn’t agree more.

Nathan Monk
All right, cool. Well, thanks very much for your time again today we of course man down. Matt is not here he’s away on holiday duties this week but hopefully, he will be back next week. And yeah, it’s been a blast Thank you very much. Don’t forget to hit that like button and see you next week