For me, "paper" (usually a .pdf from some Word file) works best - eventually exempt when having to describe complex manual handling processes (where a commented video might be advantageous).

While PowerPoint is nice for presentations (you can fill a huge number of pages with nearly no content at all - thus very impressive), the Word document can go with less "space consumption". Plus: it's really "printable".

(For congresses, I usually have some PowerPoint file for the presentation and a shorter one for handouts - omitting whatever doesn't contribute to the understanding of the topics.)

What you cannot influence is whether your material is read at all. But - according to my experience - the information content transported via videos is too short-lasting, so hardly worth the effort to create the video and often not worth the time to watch some.

Dear Dr. Dreher,

Thank you for the useful information. I have used PowerPoints For my online classes, and I am considering making videos as well. But you said that videos may not be a very good idea.

Probably, I do not want to make vidoes.

Don

Good instructional videos are a lot of effort (simply adding to the efforts to create good Word or Powerpoint materials), and the impact of the videos might be less than expected. So I consider videos some sort of "overkill".

An additional aspect: "paper" materials can be worked through at your individual pace while videos set the pace - too slow for the ones, too fast for others. and to make it last,, additional "paper" materials may be required.