Lakhasly

Back in 2022, Maloney and her team set out with a pretty straightforward question: Do those short teacher videos you see in online classes actually get students more engaged, or do they just make it look that way on paper?The instructors recorded 77 videos, uploaded them onto Vimeo, then published them into Moodle, the school's educational platform.Moodle tracked who opened the video, but Vimeo's analytics became finer-grained: who played it, how long, and whether they watched to completion.They didn't just want to count how many times students clicked on a video link--they wanted to know if students were really paying attention, or if the system stats were just painting a rosy picture.They chose seven university courses--nursing, accounting, physics, and so forth.By comparing the two data sets side by side, the group was really able to see the difference between students who were merely attending versus students who were truly engaging.It doesn't require simply creating a bunch of videos.And in all seriousness, the results were very revealing.

Back in 2022, Maloney and her team set out with a pretty straightforward question: Do those short teacher videos you see in online classes actually get students more engaged, or do they just make it look that way on paper? They didn’t just want to count how many times students clicked on a video link—they wanted to know if students were really paying attention, or if the system stats were just painting a rosy picture.

They chose seven university courses—nursing, accounting, physics, and so forth. The instructors recorded 77 videos, uploaded them onto Vimeo, then published them into Moodle, the school's educational platform. Moodle tracked who opened the video, but Vimeo's analytics became finer-grained: who played it, how long, and whether they watched to completion. By comparing the two data sets side by side, the group was really able to see the difference between students who were merely attending versus students who were truly engaging.

And in all seriousness, the results were very revealing. On Moodle, it seemed like lots and lots of students were engaged—tons and tons of clicks. But Vimeo's numbers told a different story. Only about one-third of students who opened up a video actually watched it, and less than half finished it. Briefer videos, six minutes or less, held the students' attention. The longer the videos, or the greater the number of them, the more students tuned out. Teacher reminders did have some effect, but the behavior did not shift long.

So what does that look like? It doesn't require simply creating a bunch of videos. Logging in and clicking doesn't even require students are learning something. Engagement means the videos themselves are valued for the course, how long they are, and how woven they are into everything else. Teachers must really think through what they're creating—and pay attention to how students are engaging, not just whether they're there.

Maloney's study is a much-needed reminder: numbers do not quantify learning. If you want the children to care about your videos, you have to make them count.