Effect of Video Quality on Content Understanding in Online Courses

The internet grants free and quick access to educational content for anyone. Especially video platforms like YouTube with video tutorials or Coursera with professional-grade courses and lectures facilitate self-education.

Due to the current Covid-19 pandemic, most university courses have also shifted from a classical classroom or lab context to an online format. While some courses and lectures are still taught in real time via live streaming or video conferences, many lecturers have seized the opportunity to change their courses to an asynchronous format with pre-recorded video snippets of certain topics.

But even though university lecturers have undoubtedly vast knowledge of their field, their skills, experience, and equipment needed for proper media production might be insufficient [1]. But how does the production quality of educational videos actually influence student's learning progress?

This work aims to find out how the audio and video quality of educational videos influence how good viewers understand its content. One way of approaching this question might be a controlled user study in which participants are shown educational videos of different quality levels. Content understanding could be observed with a short test after the video.

Another interesting contribution would be to investigate how well university lecturers are actually equipped for the production of educational videos and how the Covid-crisis has changed this.

TBD

• media production (recommended)
• survey and study design

[1] Hansch, A., Hillers, L., McConachie, K., Newman, C., Schildhauer, T., & Schmidt, P. (2015). Video and Online Learning: Critical Reflections and Findings from the Field. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2577882