Enterprises still lean on video
Stand in an enterprise classroom today and the first thing you see is a play bar. Covid 19 forced learning teams to put almost every programme online and managers stayed with the format even when offices reopened. During the first weeks of remote work the time that employees spent on LinkedIn Learning jumped by 130%, an extra 4.8 million hours in only 2 months (source). Budgets moved with the trend. 61% of learning leaders now plan to cut traditional classroom spend and two thirds will add more live virtual sessions, while 60% will pour funds into on demand content (source). Video feels efficient, it scales and its dashboards promise tidy proof of effort. Yet a single field experiment from Massachusetts Institute of Technology asks whether the hours watched actually stay in working memory.
Inside the MIT experiment
The scene was the World Education Congress in Indianapolis. Researchers from the MIT Integrated Learning Initiative borrowed a meeting room and asked delegates to volunteer for a study on learning habits. After a short briefing the delegates drew slips that placed them in one of two sessions. One group sat in front of a screen and watched senior lecturer Peter Senge explain the Four Fields of Listening. The second group received the same words on paper together with each diagram that appeared in the film (source). Everyone understood that a short quiz would follow the next morning, long enough after the lesson to test genuine recall rather than temporary echo. With the formalities complete the researchers let the participants return to the conference party, trusting the mix of early nights and late drinks to mirror real working life.
Unpacking the results
Breakfast brought the assessment. Average scores were close, 81.3% for the viewers and 82.5% for the readers (source). A deeper look told a sharper story. The median reading score reached 90% while the median for video settled at 80% (source). Readers also showed a narrower spread which hints at steadier comprehension across individuals. Survey data provided further insight. Roughly 30% of the delegates said they usually preferred reading yet only 20% named video as their first choice (source). Preference mattered. Participants who learned in their favoured medium scored about 10 points better than peers asked to switch (source). Sleep added an unexpected twist. More than 60% had 6 hours or less rest. Among weary readers the median slipped by 12, but weary viewers held steady, a pattern the researchers noted yet could not explain (source).
Why reading retains an edge
The numbers invite a question. Why did text outperform video? One answer lies in control. A reader adjusts tempo without thought, pausing after a dense paragraph and skimming familiar ground. Stopping a film demands clicks and a timeline search, friction that discourages reflection at the moment that matters. The page also welcomes marks in the margin. Each underline or quick note becomes a cue for later retrieval and the act of generating that cue is itself a memory workout. Video rarely triggers the same generative effort. The experimenters even saw this effect in language. Non-native speakers who read the transcript outscored native speakers by 20 points, evidence that patient engagement with text can overcome fluency gaps (source).
Guidance for learning leaders
The Indianapolis study covered one concept on one day yet its message carries weight for enterprise training. When accuracy and longevity count, provide the reading path first. Release a full transcript the same moment you debut a clip and encourage learners to skim the script before they press play. Build interactive checkpoints that ask for written answers rather than simple clicks so that every session contains retrieval practice. Keep the video short and direct. If a demonstration is essential let it live in the lesson but never let it replace the sentence where the critical figure or legal clause will later be searched. Measure delayed quiz results and search queries inside documents instead of minutes viewed. The metrics will feel slower yet they reveal the learning that survives once the dashboard is closed.