Ensuring Active Learning: Why You Need To Integrate Quizzes Into Videos
The primary objective of any evaluation mechanism is to ensure learner knowledge retention. Chickering and Gamson in their 1987 paper 'Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education' discuss the importance of active learning:
Learning is not a spectator sport...Learners must talk about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to past experiences, and apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves.
The Motivation
Making your online course engaging for learners is therefore very important. Videos are becoming increasingly important as part of eLearning courses. They offer a potential for active engagement with learners, and are therefore critical to successful pedagogy. The interactivity that a video offers is superior to other communication means. To enhance interactivity and improve learner experience, integrate quizzes into videos.
Well-designed evaluation mechanisms are a critical element to ensuring active learning. Bloom’s Taxonomy is the most followed learning evaluation system in education today. This taxonomy treats knowledge, attitude, and skills as 3 distinct goals of an effective education system. Quizzes can be designed to test for learners progress in these three general areas.
With videos becoming of increasing importance for your organization, quizzes can be used to complement the video content, to turn passive learning through video into a more active mechanism of learning. This can be done by integrating quizzes inside the video. This is because:
- Active learning.
A quiz can be integrated immediately after a topic is covered in a video. The subject would be fresh in the mind of the learners, and they would find it easier to engage with the question, thereby ensuring active learning. - Knowledge retention.
Engaging content is directly responsible for better knowledge retention. A quiz immediately after learning something ensures better retention of content. - More effective synthetic learning.
Better knowledge retention means that evaluation mechanisms testing for problem solving and synthetic learning can be designed with better chances of success. Synthesis and skill tests aid in understanding how learners use the knowledge they have acquired. The skills aspect of Bloom’s taxonomy can be better tested this way. - Scope for introducing real cases and applications.
Better knowledge retention among the learners means that you can introduce real applications and cases for discussion. These cases and scenarios can be designed to encourage real-world problem-solving, as the question of knowledge retention has already been achieved. Being able to apply new knowledge into real-life problems is highly effective.
Better Teacher Feedback
In the previous section I have explained how embedding quizzes can help achieve knowledge-retention and genuine problem solving for learners. Video quizzes also give content providers highly relevant analytics on the effectiveness of the courses. This is because learner performance in the quiz immediately after a section of a video gives a very good indication of the quality of the video. Learner performance in a quiz immediately after the video provides an input for:
- Clarity of video content.
- Ability of video content to engage learner attention.
- Understanding difficulty level for learners problem solving.
Identifying the particular aspect in the video that needs to be improved upon would require multiple iterations across different segments of the video, but this feedback would still give learners the chance to create additional resources to aid in learner developing concepts. Performance data from quizzes embedded in the videos can also be integrated into the overall course.
4 Methods To Integrate Quizzes Into Videos
There are many options that online video course creators have in designing their quizzes. The following forms may be taken for quizzes:
1. Multiple-Choice Questions.
Multiple choice questions (MCQs) are the most effective means to test learners for knowledge-retention. In general, questions in an MCQ must be direct, and the choices must be designed to encourage actual thinking, rather than allowing students to use guess-work to solve the problem.
2. Yes Or No Questions.
Yes/No questions are highly effective in testing whether learners are able to apply concepts in the video to real cases. Cases using content in the video can be created, and the viewer can be asked as to whether the conclusion is correct or not. Learners are encouraged to do better problem-solving through Yes/No questions. Alternatively, if course providers you merely wish to check for basic comprehension, you may make your learners revise their concepts through easy Yes/No questions.
3. Open Ended Questions.
They encourage learners to figure out the solution for themselves, without the hints that MCQs and Yes/No questions provide. For this reason, the questions should be well formulated, and learners should be told specifically what is expected in the answer.
4. Fill-In-The-Blank.
Fill in the blank questions involve complete knowledge retention. They are most effective as part of technical courses, where learners can be tested to see if they retain the new terms and jargon they need to use.
Settings For The Video Quiz
They can be set for varying degrees of flexibility for learners. These options include:
- Option to skip questions.
- Option to revisit answers.
- Receive hints.
- Discover correct answer after one (or multiple) attempt(s).
Integrating Video Quizzes To Overall Evaluation System With Tin Can API
Increasingly, learner activity data across different evaluation systems is being integrated into a single learner record system for the Learning Management System. The emergence of Tin Can API in particular is influencing data flow and compatibility. You can integrate the quiz results in your video as a first step towards achieving complete data flow.
Implementing Tin Can API in videos is ideal, as it can be used to track learner activity, such as which sections of video have been watched and how much time has been spent on a course activity.
Feedback and insights in the comment section are greatly welcome.