Abstract
As the use of videos for learning increases, the need to better use the viewing experience also increases. EDpuzzle is a video-sharing program that offers instructors a way to enhance the use of online videos for learning. It allows instructors to ensure that students have viewed the lesson in its entirety and determine whether they understood its content. The author has used EDpuzzle in undergraduate general business and entrepreneurship classes for homework assignments and has received positive feedback from students about it. Discussions with students have indicated that the use of EDpuzzle helped them focus more on the important aspects of the videos and that they were more confident of their learning after taking embedded quizzes. The qualities EDpuzzle offers are discussed here with particular emphasis on understanding how the application can be used to enhance the use of online videos along with its advantages and disadvantages.
Video lessons are used in education in a variety of ways. They have been incorporated into the flipped classroom (Moffett, 2015; Smith & McDonald, 2013), massive open online courses (MOOCs; Belenger & Thornton, 2013), and other learning sites, such as Lynda.com or Khan Academy, to allow individuals to learn about topics of interest at their own pace. Research has found that students who used online videos to enhance their learning earned higher cumulative test scores than those students who attended a “traditional” undergraduate course (Caviglia-Harris, 2016). As flipped classrooms, MOOCs, and online lessons increase in popularity and their reliance on video also increases, the need to use videos more effectively becomes important so that students can maximize their learning.
An abundance of research supports vicarious learning (Bandura, 1969, 1971; Manz & Sims, 1981) and learning by watching videos (Kay, 2012). Bandura (1969, 1971) conducted a number of studies examining learning by watching others. His research indicated that people can sometimes learn more from watching others rather than by doing a particular activity themselves. Research also supports the idea that watching videos in and outside of the classroom enhances the learning experience. Kay (2012) summarized 53 peer-reviewed articles written between 2002 and 2011 and found that videos led to improved classroom results. Other studies have reported that students believed that using videos had a direct positive impact on their performance (Brittain, Glowacki, Van Ittersum, & Johnson, 2006; Crippen & Earl, 2004; Dupagne, Millette, & Grinfeder, 2009). Alpay and Gulati (2010) and Armstrong, Massad, and Tucker (2009) reported that the use of videos did, in fact, improve students’ analytic, communication, cooperation, creativity, and technology skills.
The purpose of this article is to apply some of the pedagogical and empirical research that has been conducted on video learning to the use of EDpuzzle, a free online source for video sharing. A description of the program is provided followed by a discussion on ways it can be used to enhance learning. Finally, advantages and disadvantages of the program are outlined.
Description
EDpuzzle is an online resource that augments the use of video clips in classroom learning experiences. The program can be accessed free of charge by both students and teachers at https://edpuzzle.com. Educators can choose video clips from a variety of the most popular online video sources including YouTube, Khan Academy, National Geographic, TED Talks, Veritasium, Numberphile, Crash Course, and Vimeo. Each of these sites can be searched by course topics or by video title. Once a video has been chosen, EDpuzzle offers a variety of tools to supplement students’ learning experiences. These tools include cropping, voiceover, quizzing, text boxes, reporting, and sharing.
Research has shown that videos lasting 7 minutes or shorter are able to retain a student’s attention better (Guo et al., 2014; Kim et al., 2014) and that students will pay closer attention to content when they hear it from a familiar voice (Tanaka & Kudo, 2012). EDpuzzle’s cropping tool allows instructors to cut the beginning or ending of a video to make it shorter. The voiceover and audio notes tools allow instructors to record an audio track that covers the entire video, insert notes at different points throughout the video to focus students’ attention, or elaborate on particular concepts.
The EDpuzzle quiz tool allows instructors to insert one or more multiple-choice, true or false, or open-ended quizzes or written comments into the video. Students must answer the questions posed or read the comments before continuing the video. The text boxes tool allows for easy text editing and the insertion of mathematical equations or other video links. Text boxes can also be used to direct a student to other sources, summarize something they just watched, focus their attention on something they are about to watch, or tie a segment to class concepts.
EDpuzzle provides a variety of reports for instructors. Figure 1 shows a class performance page. This report indicates which students in a class watched an assigned video, how well they performed on the quiz questions provided, and whether they watched the video before its due date. These grades can be downloaded into a .csv file that can easily be uploaded to a learning management system (LMS).
Class performance.
Clicking on a student’s name in the class performance page will provide additional information about individual performance. Figure 2 shows what one student’s grade sheet would look like for a particular assignment. The figure shows whether the student watched the entire video, how many correct responses were recorded, the student’s final grade on the quiz, how many times each segment of the video was viewed, and how much time was spent on each segment. The segments are color-coded to draw attention to topics the instructor may want to revisit. At the bottom of the figure, the open-ended answers are listed. It is up to the instructor to manually grade questions that are open-ended.
Student grade sheet.
If there are multiple sections of a course, EDpuzzle provides the ability to share the same videos and the incorporated quizzes or comments with colleagues. This sharing allows the educators to ensure consistency across sections of a particular course.
Classroom Applications
EDpuzzle can be used to enhance classrooms of any level or subject. There are at least three ways the application can help students learn topics and give feedback to instructors about students’ performance.
First, EDpuzzle ensures that students actually watch a video and understand it rather than just running it in the background on their computers. When questions or comments are inserted into the video, students cannot continue with the video until they have addressed the insert by listening to the oral comments, reading an insert, or answering quiz questions. By inserting questions along the way, educators can increase the likelihood that students will absorb the content of the video.
Second, some students require repeated exposure to a concept before it sinks in. With EDpuzzle, students have the opportunity to review subjects as many times as needed to absorb the lessons. If students are watching certain sections repeatedly, or performing poorly on particular quiz questions, the instructor can use that information to modify in-class coverage or to add additional online instruction for increased elaboration.
Third, the voiceover option in EDpuzzle can be used to enhance the familiarity of the topic for students (Tanaka & Kudo, 2012). Rather than using the audio that is incorporated in the original video, instructors can record themselves talking through the video for students. This way, important concepts can be pointed out as they relate to the class with a familiar voice, and the video can be more easily tied to any text the students need reinforced.
The author has used EDpuzzle in undergraduate and MBA courses for student presentations and as a way for students to make up missed classes. In an online course, students were asked to make videos of required presentations and provide lists of related open-ended questions for the instructor to incorporate. The questions were then embedded into the presentations, and the videos were posted for other members of the class to view and comment on. This process ensured that students in the class were actually watching others’ presentations and learning from them. For missed classes, questions were inserted into video lectures to focus students’ attention on important concepts.
Advantages and Disadvantages
EDpuzzle is a free program; however, there are at least four other advantages to using it. The first advantage is that it can enhance distance-learning experiences. Studies have indicated that longer videos are less likely to be watched to completion (Guo et al., 2014; Kim et al., 2014). With EDpuzzle, students can break up videos to shorter lengths and easily see where they need to repeat information. When questions are distributed throughout the video, it helps the viewer absorb smaller pieces at a time.
Second, EDpuzzle reassures the instructor that learning has occurred. Since students can take quizzes throughout the video, instructors are able to gauge whether course concepts have been absorbed. After analyzing the student scores on quizzes from any particular video, the educator can easily see which topics were easily understood and which topics need more reinforcement. The instructor can then modify future lessons to ensure retention and understanding.
The ability to add audio notes is a third important feature to consider when using the program. When adding an audio note, the video is frozen for a short period of time while the instructor inserts some audio to help focus the lesson. This technique is called signaling. Several experiments involving both computer-based lessons and paper-based lessons found that learners who engaged in lessons incorporating signals performed better on transfer tests than students who were engaged in lessons without signals (Harp & Mayer, 1998; Mautone & Mayer, 2001; Stull & Mayer, 2007).
Last, EDpuzzle has created the ability to share videos with others. If there are multiple sections to a course, one person can find appropriate videos, write and incorporate quizzes or audio guidance, and create a library to share with the other instructors. The ability to share videos and the content allows instructors to reduce preparation time and ensure similarity across sections. It also allows the instructors to pool their quiz results to look at student learning across several classes.
Several disadvantages to the program also need to be considered. First, there is a slight learning curve to using the program. While it is menu-driven with easy-to-follow instructions throughout, it does take a little time to learn how to use it. Students may also have questions that may require extra time from the instructor.
Two-way communication is important for online classes. Many LMSs incorporate the ability to have chat sessions or even online video interaction. However, EDpuzzle provides no way for other students to comment and/or interact live with each other or with the instructor on posted videos. Any interaction must take place through the LMS.
Third, editing videos on EDpuzzle is also limited. If an instructor wants to show only parts of a video, there currently is no way to cut and paste the videos together to create one resource. Instead of cutting and pasting, instructors either have to use their own video processing tools, or they must separate the pieces they want into different videos. Cropping can only be done at the beginning and end of the video, not in the middle.
Fourth, EDpuzzle does not allow voiceover for just part of the video. If instructors want to do voiceover, they must do so for the entire video. However, audio notes can be inserted throughout.
Finally, deep integration with an LMS is not yet possible. Instructors may embed the links for their videos or assignments (this works for about 99% of LMSs), but the two programs will not be able to automatically exchange student passwords and grades.
PlayPosit (https://www.playposit.com/), formerly known as EduCanon, is an online program that is similar to EDpuzzle. The two programs are comparable, but EDpuzzle’s free version offers apps for iOS, Android, and Chrome, whereas PlayPosit offers only a Chrome app. While both offer paid versions at the teacher, school, and district levels, there are some differences in the premium packages of the two programs. In its master teacher premium package, PlayPosit allows instructors to link videos and crop from the middle of videos—actions that are not yet available on EDpuzzle. PlayPosit’s lowest cost package (teacher edition) is geared toward one class while EDpuzzle’s lowest cost package (group plan) is good for five or more teachers in a particular department.
Conclusion
Given that teaching is increasingly incorporating the use of videos, it is important to have a better understanding of how learning can be further enhanced through those videos. EDpuzzle offers the ability to address some of the issues that other video providers have not yet addressed. By allowing students to interact more with the online learning process and providing important feedback to instructors, EDpuzzle can be a valuable tool to use in flipped classrooms, MOOCs, hybrid courses, and online learning in general.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.