LXD Spotlight: Britt Jordan on Video

Join Jocelyn Wright, our Director of Community and Market Development, for a conversation with Britt Jordan, Video Learning Experience Manager, on how video can support better student learning. 

At Six Red Marbles (SRM), we believe in continuous learning. Each member of our Learning Experience Design (LXD) team has selected an area of specialization this year to deepen their expertise and expand the value they bring to our clients. Our LXD Spotlight series highlights what our team is exploring and how those insights translate directly into client impact. 

Today, I’m talking to Britt Jordan, our Video Learning Experience Manager, about how comedy can improve video, cross-cultural collaboration, and why higher education programs can benefit from a media strategy. 

What drew you to video?

My first job after grad school was in Learning Experience Design at SRM preparing video scripts for the team, doing things like stock photo research and making sure the specs were good. I moved on from SRM before returning last year, but every job I’ve had in the 10 years since then has had some kind of media component. Video has an element of visual creativity that I really love. I love movies; I love art. I’m just a very visual person.  

You’ve designed hundreds of videos throughout your career. Is there a video project that really changed how you approach video? What did you learn from it?

I worked at a startup where we hired comedians to punch up our video scripts. We even created our own manager training that featured a comedic host. He was a sort of Mr. Bean goofy slapstick character to capture all the things a terrible manager would do. We used it in-house on all our new managers and measured whether they were doing the right things, whether their direct reports were effective managers—and it totally worked!  

What I loved about that experience was using videos to introduce play and whimsy into an area that is usually dull and compliance based. You’d never want to introduce comedy into serious topics like sexual harassment, and of course we didn’t do that, but where it was possible, it’s nice to make people laugh. Everybody needs additional skills in their job, and the time you have to spend doing online training can be dull and unmotivating. I enjoyed figuring out how to make it enjoyable and fruitful so you don’t waste the learner’s time and also how to measure it so the employer sees it was a worthwhile experience. 

After a few jobs in corporate training, you pivoted to a role where you developed training for teachers. How was that different from corporate training? How did you change your approach?

Teacher professional training is really different. They’re a highly motivated group of individuals whose main issue is they don’t have time and they often don’t have support. The work they do is so, so complicated, so individual and personality-driven, and different depending on what context you’re teaching in. Teachers are also constantly getting people from the outside telling them what to do, which can cause fatigue. 

The big puzzle for that one was how to make the training authentic, like really honor the teachers as experts and come to them at the level they need and want to be at. It’s always hard to design for a wide range of learners with different backgrounds, experiences, and knowledge levels. 

We focused on making the videos inspirational and practice-based. We showed teaching in practice and made sure that the people we had on screen were always educators—a slightly more advanced or trusted peer with that coach voice—so the learners’ own experiences were reflected back to them.  

What about this project stood out to you the most?

The coolest part of that project was that it evolved into a co-designed product where we were actually working with the teachers at the school to make the videos. The teachers worked with our SME to work on a lesson plan to make sure it was incorporating best practices, then we went in and filmed entire class periods, took segments of it, and did call-outs to show what was working and student reactions. We also did interviews with teachers and with students, and it was really, really moving to see students talk about what has been helpful to them and what they wished their teachers knew. 

I think working with the learner is just the best opportunity no matter what the design is, but with video it’s a kind of special opportunity for representation. In this case, the leaners at the school we worked with had this great experience of seeing their teachers on screen with professional development. Of course you’re not going to do that with every school, because it’s expensive, but other teachers could still really relate to that experience because it’s so hyper-specific. There are so many things you only see in a real classroom, so getting that authenticity was really, really effective. 

You returned to SRM last year to manage our video projects. Which project has been the most fun for you to work on so far?

At SRM I’ve been mostly working on animated video. What’s been really fun about these experiences is seeing the client vision come alive on screen.  

A client asked us to create a new style of video based on something they had seen online that they really liked. We made this kinetic typography style, and it was great to work with our Creative Head, Danish Zaidi, and our new lead animator, Shubhankit Sharma. He’s awesome—I think he could probably do anything! The client had found this reference video, and we interpreted it to match their use cases and who their learner is.  

One of the puzzles we had to figure out is that they really loved this kinetic typography on screen but they have a young K–2 age band. First graders aren’t going to be able to read a ton of words going quickly across a screen. I worked with one of our literacy specialists on the editorial team to determine what would be appropriate for this age group and support literacy.  

We took multiple goals—their stylistic goal, social-emotional learning, the layer of the literacy element, meeting the learner where they are—and created some beautiful videos. 

This video, like many of the videos you create, is the product of a collaboration with our team in India. Tell me more about how you collaborate in that cross-cultural context.

I love working cross-culturally. I started my career living and working abroad in Indonesia, and then my first LXD job was working with the team in India. The neighborhood of Brooklyn I live in is very multicultural. I always want to know what’s going on in Delhi. I give them a little slice of my life and get a little slice of their life. 

Our collaboration is cross-cultural in two dimensions. Obviously they live in India and I live in the United States, but there’s also the aspect of how we work. They’re production house creatives, and that’s not a role I’ve ever been in. We do a lot of translating of terminology and explaining a skill or need. Getting to know their constraints and capabilities has been a great learning experience. 

Danish and Shubhankit are my main collaborators, and I love when we get to do the creative stuff, like talk about what we’re going to do, how we can make it more engaging, and what options we should show the client. It’s about figuring out what would be the best design and then figuring out how to best communicate that to the client. 

We’ve talked about K–12, teacher, and corporate audiences. What kinds of media would you love to create with our higher education clients?

More and more programs are available remotely or in low-residency format, so it will be really worth it for a university to focus on a media strategy for their courses overall. I always want to ask clients: What media do you use in your life? What media do students use in their lives? What media are you using for learning in other contexts like MasterClass, Duolingo, or podcasts? What about YouTube Shorts? 

Programs should be thoughtful about incorporating shorter, more focused pieces of media. Microlearning isn’t a new thing at all, but I’ve always wondered how we can do a little bit more of that, things like YouTube Shorts. If we break up long lecture videos or add motion graphics to help support concepts, that’s going to make that class so much more recognizable and enjoyable for students. 

We can also play a little bit with levels of formality. Maybe you have formal videos that you put major investment in, but there can also be little opportunities for instructors to make off-the-cuff videos. If they’re short and responsive, that’s another way to meet the learner in this remote environment and make them feel like they’re closer and building this relationship.  

It was great chatting with you, Britt! 

Britt Jordan, Video Learning Experience Manager, is a multi-hyphenate creative with 10+ years of designing digital learning experiences. Britt has worked on every part of the video creation process, both in front of and behind the camera, and has a special love for video as a storytelling and learning medium. Her career focus is co-designing with adult learners to create an authentic experience that has measurable impact on their lives. At SRM, Britt brings design and learning science principles into media products for K–12 curricula, higher ed courses, and nontraditional learners.  

What Britt’s Insights Mean for Our Partners 

Six Red Marbles brings deep expertise in designing and producing high-quality educational videos that inform, engage, and inspire learners. Our team combines strong instructional design, creative storytelling, and efficient production workflows to deliver polished video solutions at scale. We have extensive experience creating videos for K–12 and higher education, as well as adult learning, corporate training, and career and technical education programs. From concept through final delivery, Six Red Marbles develops videos that are visually compelling, pedagogically sound, and aligned to client goals. 

Six Red Marbles can confidently create videos at scale for K–12 and adult learner audiences. Some scenarios where we thrive are: 

• Working with higher education or professional institutions on overarching media strategy for a learning program—and then following through to production stages
• Collaborating with clients who have existing art or character libraries to create high-quality animated videos with custom voice-over
• Storyboarding and scripting for learning videos with specific age bands and learning considerations (e.g. literacy, numeracy, etc.)
• Creative collaboration: taking your vision and creating a unique style of media… or two or three styles!
• Ensuring accessibility in all video and media content 

Resources 

Instructor Presence & Video Strategy in Higher Education 

• Learner Engagement with Instructor-Generated Video (British Journal of Educational Technology, 2024): Examines how learners engage with instructor-generated video, connecting social presence theory to findings on affective engagement, accessibility, and the role of visual cues in signaling instructor presence. 

• What Drives Student Engagement and Learning in Video Lectures? (Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2025): Finds that instructor visibility alone doesn’t affect engagement or learning overall, but students report higher engagement when videos match their individual preferences—an argument for offering flexible video formats. 

• Meaningful Connection in Virtual Classrooms: Graduate Students Perspectives on Effective Instructor Presence (Frontiers in Education, 2023): Qualitative study finding that students value early relationship-building, authentic personality-sharing, and learner-centered course design, with effective instructor presence fostering trust and reducing anxiety. 

• Instructor Presence in Instructional Videos in Higher Education (Educational Technology Research and Development, 2024): Three field experiments embedded in real university courses examine how a visible instructor affects social presence and well-being, with practical implications for video production decisions. 

• Online Instructor Presence (Ohio State University Teaching and Learning Resource Center): Practical guide synthesizing research on course design, facilitation of discourse, and direct instruction as the three pillars of instructor presence, with actionable strategies for faculty. 

Microlearning & Short-Form Video 

• Preclass Video Nanolearning or Microlearning in Blended Medical Education (Frontiers in Medicine, 2025): Compares single-concept and multi-concept short video formats in medical education, finding that students valued both formats for convenience and effectiveness in pre-class preparation. 

• Microlearning Statistics, Facts and Trends for 2025 (eLearning Industry, 2025): Data-rich overview reporting that 85% of organizations use video in microlearning strategies and that video-based microlearning improves information retention by 20% compared to other formats. 

• Microlearning Statistics (Vouch, 2025): Compiles 13 key statistics including an 80% average completion rate for microlearning versus 20% for traditional long-form courses, with context on mobile learning adoption and compliance training applications. 

Humor, Play & Engagement in Corporate Training 

• Leading with Humor (Harvard Business Review, 2014): Foundational article citing research from Wharton, MIT, and London Business School linking workplace humor to reduced stress, increased engagement, and gains in creativity, collaboration, and analytic precision. 

• Why Laughter Is Serious Business (Rochester Business Journal, 2025): Summarizes a meta-analysis of 49 studies (8,500+ participants) showing positive humor enhances resilience, cohesion, and performance while outlining risks of poorly executed humor and key competencies for success. 

• Using Comedy and Creativity to Enhance Compliance and Risk Training (Corporate Compliance Insights, 2019): Applied perspective from a comedy-to-corporate crossover practitioner on using humor to increase engagement with serious workplace behavior topics, with practical guidance on when and how humor works. 

• Effectiveness of a Humor-Based Training for Reducing Employees’ Distress (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021): One of few intervention studies on humor in organizational settings, finding that emergency ambulance workers reported higher cheerfulness and significantly lower psychological distress after humor-based training. 

• Humor in Workplace Leadership: A Systematic Search Scoping Review (Frontiers in Psychology, 2021): Reviews the literature on humor as a leadership skill, arguing that humor use can be cultivated through training rather than treated as a fixed personality trait—relevant for manager development programs. 

Co-Design, Representation & Authenticity in K–12 Video 

• Three Ways to Empower Students to Co-Design Learning (Global Online Academy, 2021): Practical framework for equipping students with the environment, skills, and structures to take active roles in working toward learning targets—applicable to co-designed media projects. 

• A Model for Professional Development for High School Teachers (Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 2019): Argues that co-design during curriculum planning achieves collaborative, sustained, contextual teacher professional development that respects teacher autonomy while driving changes in learner experiences. 

• Video-Based Teacher Professional Development for Dialogic Teaching: A Systematic Review (Computers & Education, 2026): Synthesizes 35 studies on video-based teacher professional development identifying effective design features including practice-based content, active teacher engagement, and coherence with teachers’ existing knowledge and beliefs. 

• Teaching Channel: Video Coaching and Learning Platform (Teaching Channel): Platform hosting 2,500+ classroom videos aligned to learning standards, enabling educators to observe and adopt strategies through real classroom footage—a model for practice-based, co-designed video at scale. 

Animation & Motion Graphics in Education 

• Motion Graphic Animation Videos to Improve the Learning Outcomes of Elementary School Students (European Journal of Educational Research, 2019): Experimental study finding significant learning gains for elementary students using motion graphic animation video compared to a control group, confirming effectiveness in improving science knowledge. 

• Computer-Animated Videos in Education: A Comprehensive Review and Teacher Experiences from Animation Creation (ResearchGate, 2024): Reviews the landscape of animated video in education, noting that animations are particularly effective with younger learners and identifying a need for more K–12–specific research. 
• Implementing a Social Presence-Based Teaching Strategy in Online Lecture Learning (European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education, 2024): Develops a teaching strategy emphasizing both instructor and peer presence in video-based online courses, with implications for designing learning activities around video content.