An interactive video-based learning environment supporting learning analytics:

Insights obtained from analyzing learner activity data

ICSLE 2015- SE@VBL

Alexandros KleftodimosTEI of Western Macedonia &

University of Macedonia

Georgios EvangelidisUniversity of Macedonia

Online educational videos are mostly linear videos that are watched passively with the only means of interactivity to be limited to the navigational buttons used to start, pause and resume the video

New tools for adding interactive elements and extra content to educational videos

Adding interactive elements & content

Commercial•Edpuzzle

•EduCanon

•Zaption

Free & open source•Popcorn Maker (Mozzila)

Adding Discussions

Free•Vialogues

•Grockit Answers

Images

Various Elements appear at any point in the video timeline

Multiple choice questionsOpen responses

Text

Discussions

Popcorn Maker (googlemap,popup text,image,Wikipedia)

Statistics from Zaption and EdPuzzle (e.g viewers by date, viewing time etc)

Advantages & Disadvantages

Polished Environment

User Friendly & drag and Drop

features

•Applications contain different

set of features

•In commercial applications a

number of features are not

free

•Not Open Source

•Basic Analytics features

Developing a video based learning environment using open source tools and

open internet resources

OPTIONS• Mozilla Popcorn framework (used in Popcorn Maker and

Grockit answers)

Open source HTML 5 players such as• MediaElement(http://mediaelementjs.com) • Flowplayer (http://flowplayer.org).

The features that are present in the learning environment are the following:

• Questions that appear at various points in the timeline.

• Sections & Table of Contents • Subtitles• Content aggregation (e.g., Google Map,

Google forms, Slideshare)

Administrator (educator) & Viewer Modules

• Administrator module is for associating elements (or sections) with points in the timeline

• Setting:– Multiple Choice questions– Open response – Web resources (e.g url or web service)– Sections

Setting Questions

Previewing

Viewer Module

Table of Contents

Subtitles (Admin Module)

Web content aggregation (e.g Google Map) -Viewer Module

Quiz from Google Forms (Viewer Module)

Administrator Module (Synchronizing Video with Slideshare slides)

Table of contents & Multiple choice questions

Video learning analytics

Login Procedure

Sessions

Sessions Videos

Sessions events

EVENTS TRIGERED•Loaded data

•Seek

•Play

•Pause

•End

•Volume change & Mute

•Section Enter (Event type, video time, current time, date)

Educational Settings• The developed learning environment is used at the Department of

Digital Media and Communication at the Technological Education Institute of Western Macedonia, Greece.

• Autumn semester 2014-2015 to support the theoretical part of the first semester courses – “Introduction to new Technologies in Communication” (5 videos

from YouTube) – “Image and Video editing Principles” (1 video).

• Spring semester 2015 to support the second semester course – “Graphic Design” for both the theoretical part (1 video from

YouTube, Fig. 1) and – the laboratory part (10 videos for learning the vector graphics

software Inkscape).

During the autumn semester 2014-2015 students attending the course “Video and Image editing Principles” were given a video to watch as part of the syllabus

Video length: 30 minutes

Sections were defined for the video and the headers of these sections appeared as a table of contents next to the video (Fig. 2). The video consisted of 14 sections. The sections reflected different topics (e.g., an interview). •Video contained information about the promotional video creation process as well as the professionals involved in this process (script writer, director, video editing specialist, etc.).

Educational Settings

Course: Image and Video editing Principles

Educational Settings- Assignment• Students were given an optional assignment that was related to the

video • A questionnaire (20%) that was delivered through Google Forms and a

written assignment (80%) that consisted of several open-ended questions.

• assignment was not incorporated in the video environment but was distributed through the institutional learning management system

• The video content was also included in the exam syllabus

Aim of Analysis

• Understand the activity behavior of the learners with respect to the environment features in use (e.g., table of contents) and other factors that affect the viewing behaviour (i.e. assignment and exams), throughout a semester period.

• The analysis also investigates if more active ways of learning such combining video viewing with parallel completion of a related assignment benefits the learning process.

Temporal Aspects

Transition Matrix- (R package Heatmap)

Does video viewing have better outcomes when accompanied by an assignment?

• Another aspect that was investigated was if video viewing yields better learning outcomes when accompanied by an assignment related to the video content

• The focus is only on the students that viewed the video lesson at least once and participated in the exam.

• Besides the overall exam mark, the student mark on the questions associated to the video (which counted for 50%) was recorded and only this mark is used in the study conducted (“video exam mark – VE mark”. )

Does video viewing have better outcomes when accompanied by an assignment?

• An independent sample t-test was conducted in order to check the effect of the assignment in the final VE mark.

• The sample of students was divided into two groups. The first group was comprised of 30 students who completed the assignment and the second group consisted of 27 students who did not complete the assignment.

• Findings from the t-test indicate that significant differences (p<0.05) exist in the mean scores of the two groups (t=3.289, p=0.002). Students who completed the assignment received higher grades (M=6.63) in the VE mark than those who did not complete the assignment (M=4.09).

Results of analysis• Students viewed the video mainly before the assignment

turn in date and the exam date• Viewing was more ‘turbulent” during the assignment

completion where the Content table feature was used more

• Content table was mainly used to jump to the previous section

• Amongst the students that viewed the video the ones that engaged further by attempting an assignment related to the video content, achieved better in the exam.

Conclusions & Future work• The purpose of this paper was to present a video based

learning environment that – aggregates video content with interactive elements and content

that comes either from the educator or open web resources – Supports learning analytics by providing a data gathering module– Data can be analyzed with packages such as R, Weka, SPSS

• Future Work– incorporate more features into the environment (e.g., discussions,

Branching), use the features within learning scenarios and conduct further data analysis and mining

– Incorporate package functions (R,Weka) in the environment

Thank you for listening