Assessing the Impact of Using Short Videos for Teaching at Higher Education: Empirical Evidence From Log-Files in a Learning Management System

The advent of digital technologies and the rapid growth in access to high-speed internet has revolutionized teaching and learning practices. In this work, we focus on the use of video in the higher education space. In particular, we question whether summary videos of learning objectives and exercises can be used effectively to enhance learning. Recent methodologies and the new online paradigm have increased the use of Learning Management Systems (LMS), especially at the higher level education system. One of the advantages is that LMS allows the acquisition of objective data from student activity. In our study, we applied the video-mentioned methodology and further analyzed the student’s behavior. This allows us to provide a student categorization based on their online profile activity and concisely characterize their LMS platform interaction. The study was developed in an undergraduate Engineering degree course at the Universitat de València, allowing us to measure the success of video use for students. Our promising results indicate there is a relation between access to educational videos and the student’s academic performance, supporting educational videos can be effectively used to enhance learning.