It took us some experimenting to realize the following about background music in the videos. Background music throughout an entire video is neither negative or positive for student experience by itself. It becomes negative or positive in a specific context. In our experience, having it throughout a video that does not really require a deep understanding, but simply requires students to 'look and repeat,' is just fine. In fact, students appreciate that because it makes the video less boring and more vibrant. It has a positive effect,. However, if the video requires more than just repeating a task and actually requires understanding (e.g. explaining a formula), then it's best to remove all background music since it hinders the understanding process. It all depends on context.
Here are some tip for background music which we want to share and maybe they help you:
- If the music has drums, it's going to interfere with your speech too much.
- You want music that has minimal volume variation (so music that starts soft and then suddenly becomes louder, is your enemy). If it does not have minimal volume variation by itself, most video editing softwares like Camtasia allow you to minimize the variation of the volume.
- Soft piano jazz elevator music is generally the best overall choice.
- Always have a fade in of 1-2 seconds. You do not know what volume the student is using and you don't want to suddenly blast heavy metal music intro in their ears when they press play. Give them time to gradually get used to it.
