Clear, detailed instructional procedures have an important role to play in laboratory teaching, not only to produce consistent results, but to ensure safe practices. Student success in using these can be strengthened through the use of video resources. However, not all video content will have the same impact. Videos must have sufficient relevance and focus to connect with the user’s experience level. Achieving this target can be a challenge for a subject matter expert because they have come a long way from first learning the relevant lab skills. As a result, drawing on the fresh perspective of recent trainees to generate instructional video content can make a difference in the impactfulness of the final product. Their heightened awareness of new experiences can not only better focus the content on the most straightforward essentials, but also shape the content into a story-like format, thereby amplifying the power to connect with future users. In this paper we identify and explain elements that contribute to the development of robust student-generated video resources, including principles of cognition, instructional design, and social networking, and we demonstrate how key aspects of procedural communication can be applied in making and using instructional videos in academic teaching labs.