The Blurred Line between “Long” and “Short”: How the Length of Video Lectures Affects the Viewing Behavior of E-Learners

Abstract

Recent research has focused on the impact of video lectures on students’ academic performance rather than the viewing behavior of learners. In this study, we investigate the learners’ preferences of video lectures in terms of the length as well as the devices used to access the online learning material. We published two versions of video lectures on two YouTube channels. The online material was produced by recording a real face-to-face class context at the Arab Open University. The video recorded material belongs to a first level course offered to students at the Faculty of Computer Studies. The first version of the online lectures comprised 7 videos and is, hence, called long-run version. The second version, termed as short-run version, consisted of 28 video lectures. Video contents are identical in both versions. Total recording time amounted to 528 minutes in both video versions with an average of 75 and 19 minutes in long-run and short-run versions, respectively. We found that though students alternated between the use of mobile phones, tablets and desktops, however, they mainly accessed the online material through desktops. Moreover, students spent a total of 43765 minutes in viewing the long-run videos compared with 4766 minutes spent on the short-run ones. Considering the number of views (3143 for the long-run and 846 views for the short-run videos) yields average viewing times of 13.92 and 5.63 minutes per views for the long-run and short-run videos, respectively. This is interesting, for these results show that students are willing to spend approximately 14 minutes when viewing an approximately 75 minutes long video lecture, but when offered a 22 minutes long alternative, the time they spend in viewing does not exceed 6 minutes on average. Our results imply that students do access the online video lectures for learning purposes. However, more should be done, so as to approach near-optimal lengths of video lectures that facilitate a complete viewing of the learning material.

Keywords: Video lectures, Blended learning, Viewing behavior, Big data analysis