“Using Learner Reviews to Inform Instructional Video Design in MOOCs”

ANNOTATION: Deng, R., & Gao, Y. (2023). Using Learner Reviews to Inform Instructional Video Design in MOOCs. Behavioral Sciences, 13(4), 330. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs13040330

Video watching is the most common instructional resource in MOOCs, and many studies have been completed to determine students’ impressions and preferences. However, according to the authors, most of these have been small studies, so these authors set out to analyze learner behavior at Chinese University MOOC, which offers more than 10,000 courses from 700+ Chinese institutions of higher education. The goal of the research was to characterize which video features higher-ed learners favored most, types of resources learners valued as supplements or in-video features, and which video production features learners liked best.  Conclusions were that learners favored videos that were, in order: organized, detailed, comprehensible, interesting, and practical. They deemed slides, readings, post-video assessments, questions embedded within the video, and case studies as helpful. And finally, LENGTH of video was learners’ most important factor for video satisfaction, more important than editing quality, video resolution, presence of subtitles, music, or voice.

The researchers collected data from 1,648,747 MOOC reviews in fourteen categories that included courses in sciences, humanities, law, the arts, sports, and psychology. Learners provided ratings and text-based reviews, all of which were publicly available. Numerous entries were excluded from the data, for a variety of reasons, such as being too brief, unclear, or generic to be considered. The final number was cut down to 4,534, and these were analyzed using MAXQDA Analytics software. The authors used a grounded method to analyze the data, allowing themes to emerge during the data analysis rather than imposing a theoretical framework on the body of data. Two teams of knowledgeable researchers coded the data separately and cross-referenced results to adjust for discrepancies in coding.

Some key takeaways suitable for the development of educational video in any online asynchronous model:

• Organization of information is highly valued, above all. Learners appreciated carefully designed videos with adequate amounts of detail and clear organizational structure that is easy to follow and to understand.  Learners want to understand the logical connections between key concepts. According to the authors, “Our analysis suggest that learners likely prefer shorter videos due to the prominence of key points and their attentional state being optimized.”
• “Interesting” videos are those are fun to learn from, and students appreciate humor, storytelling, and other engagement tactics.
• Practicality matters: learners seek information that is relevant to their present life and work.
• Length of video is critical. Learners prefer short videos because that allows the key points to stand out. The researchers suggested that often, shorter videos mean that sufficient pre-production time was devoted to clarifying the content and no information was extraneous. They felt that they could stay focused more readily in shorter videos and could fit short-video viewing into pockets of time they had available for their online studies. 

Having read an article on video-watching behavior in EdX MOOCs from 2015, I sought the most current study I could find to determine whether viewing behavior in MOOCs had changed much since the advent of short-form video. I discovered this study and discovered that the findings were very much in line with EdX’s 2015 conclusions. However, this study was done with MOOCs in China, so it is unclear as to how much those viewers may have been affected by current American video-watching trends with young audiences, including TikTok and Instagram reels. More research is needed.