Abstract. This research examined how students at the Open University of Israel studied from video recordings of lectures. At the semester's end, seven history students were interviewed in order to trace their experiences, learning strategies and preferences. It was found that (1) reading comprehension strategies are inappropriate for viewing comprehension, (2) presumed theoretical advantages associated with instructional video may in fact be disadvantages, (3) the medium does indeed influence the message, (4) mismatching medium and message may have deleterious results on students' cognitive and affective outcomes and (5) surface-level orientations to study may be hindered by video.