Research: Video Usage in Ed Continues Ramp-up

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 07/18/16

When it comes to the use of video in education, the over-riding theme — as we might expect — is more, more, more. More students have exposure to video in their courses, more schools are using video, more educators are using flipped classrooms more often and more lecture capture and webcasting is going on.

For example, 58 percent of colleges are running flipped classes, up from 50 percent last year. Lecture capture has grown by five percentage points to 77 percent and webcasting has gone up by four percentage points to 51 percent over the same period.

In K-12, 87 percent of schools are using video in the classroom, compared to 86 percent in higher ed. That's the most common use for video in education. The second most common use in colleges is for supplementary course material, used by 79 percent of institutions. And in K-12 the number two use for video is as part of student assignments, used in 71 percent of classrooms.

How higher education is using video:

• 86 percent of respondents said they show video in classes;
• 79 percent said they use it as supplementary course material;
• 77 percent reported using video or lecture capture;
• 75 percent told researchers they use video for student assignments; and
• 66 percent said they use it for recording campus events for on-demand viewing

Those results come out of the latest edition of "The State of Video in Education," produced by Kaltura, a company that sells video products and services. This 2016 survey received responses from more than 1,500 international respondents to an online survey conducted in April among people in both higher education (74 percent) and K-12 (19 percent). The remainder of respondents were primarily from education technology companies, foundations or educational organizations. Job roles included instructional design and technology (32 percent), educator (28 percent), IT and system administration (22 percent), administration and staff (20 percent) and media team and video production (14 percent). (Respondents could designate more than one role.)

This year found a majority of respondents in higher ed (52 percent) integrating their video into their learning management system (LMS); that was only 46 percent last year. Another 18 percent use built-in video tools in the LMS. In K-12 43 percent of school systems have integrated the two forms of education technology and 17 percent use tools embedded into their LMS.

Other nuggets that surfaced in the survey include:

• The optimal length for educational videos is 10 minutes or shorter, according to 74 percent of participants. Whereas 55 percent of educators chose five to 10 minutes as the optimal length, that duration was picked by only 33 percent of students. Yet 43 percent of students picked videos 10 to 30 minutes in length, compared to only 24 percent of educators.
• The use of video to provide feedback on school work is gaining in popularity, up from 26 percent in 2015 to 32 percent this year.
• The most valued video feature is a "chapter" function, which enables a video to be parsed into more "browseable" chunks, mentioned by 85 percent of respondents as either "extremely useful" or "very useful." That's followed by closed captioning, referenced by 82 percent of respondents.
• The video functionality of the future that sparked the most interest among people was the ability to grade quizzes inside videos (chosen by 41 percent of respondents), followed by student video broadcast from mobile phones (36 percent) and videos that branch to other videos based on in-video action (35 percent).

As might be expected in a self-selected group of respondents to a survey on the use of video at school, these people are enthusiastic about the potential for video in education:

• More than 9 in 10 (93 percent) said they believe video has a "positive" impact" on student satisfaction;
• Almost 9 in 10 (88 percent) agreed that the use of video could boost student achievement;
• A nearly similar number, 86 percent, stated that video could help with professional development and collaboration among educators;
• More than 8 in 10 (82 percent) said they have found that video makes student onboarding easier; and
• Nearly 8 in 10 (76 percent) reported that video increases student retention.

"The role of video in education is currently becoming more central to the education experience and will increasingly be used as a communication medium, instructional tool, teaching platform, and mode of student expression," concluded an institutional designer at a large North American institution in the report.

The full survey results are available on the Kaltura website with registration.