The sudden revival of educational video

In the 1970s and `80s, television was the primary support medium in education, though the guidelines for its use were not consistently applied. In the 1990s, ETV was marginalised in western education owing to the assumption that the internet would prove more cost-effective. By contrast, Asian nations including China and India did not reject ETV, but maintained a steady evolutionary process which western ETV now lacks. Since 2011, the emergence in the west of the massive open online course (MOOC) has led to a widespread revival of interest in ETV, and the paper considers whether this time the medium's use is based on solid pedagogical principles. The efficient use of educational technologies in general is described as resulting not from a choice between high- and low-technology media, but from the application of instructional design (ID) principles applicable to all media. A checklist is provided of the ID principles established by educational researchers over the past century. The one principle consistently stressed by all of these researchers, though now being rejected by MOOC providers, is the role of the teacher in the educational process. The checklist is intended as a useful frame of reference for educators assessing the pedagogical value of current MOOC approaches.