You Tube Video best practice - any suggestions?

Linking to an external URL is always a risk. The best practice is to avoid linking to any URL you don't control. But, of course, that's not always feasible.

A few helpful practices:

• Someone should periodically test the link.
  • In theory, learners who encounter a broken link will report it. But they may be happy to just skip the video and move on. So, on the slide that links to the video, consider including a small disclaimer that states that the company doesn't control the URL, it may be broken, and how to report that. (And still plan to test it, because they still might not report a broken link.)
  • Ideally, there should be a well-maintained master list of courses and their links. That should include links to intranet sites, too, since those also change (e.g., policy updates).
• There should be a plan for revising the course asap when a link is broken. In addition to editing the link, that might involve re-scripting. That might then require re-recording narration, which might then require resyncing animations...  Even if the only change is swapping the URL, the course still needs to be reloaded in the LMS. 
  
  • Depending on the company, the course topic, how it is assigned, etc., consider the risk if learners can't access the content for an extended period. 

Judy, that is some REALLY helpful advice. Great point about also thinking about intranet sites, too. Thanks so much for sharing!

Hi Martin! To go along with Judy's advice of having a master list of courses and their links, I wanted to share this course update spreadsheet. You can customize it to include links to video and intranet sites within the doc if you want a quick way to check those for multiple courses in the future. Hope that helps! 

Judy and Sarah - thank you both very much. Really helpful tips and suggestions. Thank you.