Who can do this web video programming project?
September 4, 2014 4:22 AM

How do I find someone who can make our series of educational web videos interactive (with quizzes and links), and how much will it cost?

I’m writing a series of educational videos about finance and economics for a company. I want the videos to have interactive quizzes (e.g., a text box pops up and you have to input an answer, then an answer key pops up to explain the correct response) and sidebars (you click a button and a separate video plays, or a link takes you to another video entirely). This is basically a mash-up of YouTube annotation and Coursera-type quizzes.

First question, I’ve got the video production covered, but how do I find someone who can do the programming? This will be hosted on a website using HTML5. Do I need a front-end developer or something else? Where does one find such a person/company?

Second question, how much should this cost? I have no idea if we’re talking $500 or $500,000 here. How do I know if a quote is reasonable? Thank you!
posted by crookedneighbor to Computers & Internet (5 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
Hiya! I'm a multimedia specialist at a community college, this is the exact kind of thing I do.

You want to find someone who knows software like Camtasia and Articulate Storyline for the interactive quiz parts.

The sidebar can be done by anyone who can navigate their way around basic Web Design.. which you might want anyways, to set up the entire look and feel of the video series.

You're either looking at one person with a varied skill set (Multimedia person), or two people. (Web Designer and Video editor)

Cost is a little more complicated. Based in large part on the number of videos, length, and how many quizzes you want in each video. I can tell you that $20-$30/hour is what we pay people like myself at the college. If you have a lot of quizzes/videos, then I'd quote you closer to $40.

Places to find us: Ping the career department of local colleges. Especially schools with a technology-degree reputation. Otherwise I'd look into places like elance.
posted by royalsong at 5:03 AM on September 4, 2014


Do the results of the quizzes have to be recorded somewhere? If they need to be recorded somewhere, can the results of all quizzes be public information accessible by everyone, or do you need a login-type system so that only the person taking the quiz can see the recorded results? Do you need some sort of administrative interface for organizing and analyzing the information, or is something that occasionally spits out spreadsheet/CSV files for download enough? What's the lower limit for how many people need to be able to be watching video and taking quizzes simultaneously before things start breaking down?
posted by XMLicious at 5:14 AM on September 4, 2014


I was about to chime in with XMlicious's points. If your quiz has any element of access control or data storage attached to it you are likely to need someone to either build a database for you, or to configure an existing product so that it meets your requirements, as well as someone to provide the front end display elements you've specified above.

If you don't need people to log-in to use the quiz, or to retrieve information from it across a number of different sessions, the job will be much simpler.

If you can provide an example of the sort of thing you're after you will get a better approximation of the type of skills required to build it.
posted by freya_lamb at 5:28 AM on September 4, 2014


Thanks, all. To answer those questions:
- we're using Sharepoint to host this, so some access/login stuff is built in
- we don't need to record the quiz answers if that's a lot of extra work
- max simultaneous usage is pretty small, less than 100 people
- scope is roughly 10 videos of 10 minutes each

As for examples, Coursera's pop-up quizzes are the best example I've seen, where there's a little green mark in the progress bar and when you reach it, the video pauses and a text box pops up to ask a question. You input the answer, and it tells you whether it's correct or not, then if you click a button marked "explanation" there's another text box that explains the answer. Any of the lecture videos in this Coursera class have this feature.
posted by crookedneighbor at 6:08 AM on September 4, 2014


Oh yay! you have an LMS. (learning management system) I was writing a long reply about how you're in over your head if you didn't and recording progress was vital.

Sharepoint is SCORM compliant, which is really all you need to worry about if you want to record quiz answers/score. SCORM compliance allows interactive software to talk to the LMS and record progress.

Camtasia does SCORM. Find someone who knows the in and outs of Camtasia and you should be golden. Just make them aware that the final product needs to be produced with SCORM.
posted by royalsong at 6:18 AM on September 4, 2014


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