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Nary a vido

Browsing through my e-learning site, you may notice that, aside from the first lesson page - there are no embedded videos. I had the option to record some video tutorials for my site, but I chose not to. There's actually four reason for this:

It takes time

Recording videos it time consuming. To record a tutorial I would need to prepare all my materials - effectively another lesson's worth of prep - then rehearse the session, record it (as many takes as I needed) then edit it together. I really detest typical YouTube tutorial videos that spend five minutes begging for subscribers then doing the tutorial in one take, regardless of how far it goes off the rails. I have a bit of pride in my work, and would need to put the time in to do it properly.

Maybe if I teach this module again I could record the lecture and upload that, but that leads onto the second point:

I want students to attend

There is always a risk with VLEs that students will skip classes as all the materials are available online. Why put effort into showing up if there's no advantage over staying in the comfort of your own home? Ultimately, this is intended to be a blended learning course, part of which requires learners to attend physical classes. That's where the tutorials should be happening. When off-site, learners should be researching other sources anyhow, which brings us to:

There's better ones out there

I am a videographer, web developer and an educator so you'd assume I could put a mean tutorial video together, but honestly, have you seen some of the competition? I may have the knowledge and skills needed, but I haven't got the resources - time, money - to compete with the slickly designed tutorial sites out there. Much of it can be accessed for free, so why compete? I'll play to my strengths, thanks. Besides...

Video is a poor fit for the subject

This is pretty important. Video is a time-based format that is less than ideal for text-based footage. A coding video requires viewers to make good use of the pause and rewind buttons to practice themselves, and you can't put too much on-screen at once because of legibility issues. Putting a webdev tutorial into a video is quite shoehorny (a word that needs to exist) and is better served by normal web pages or other flat documents. That's not to say there aren't some good videos out there, and in the full version of the module that includes JavaScript, I do have some of Douglas Crockford's presentations as resources, but I haven't found an HTML one that offers any benefits.
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