Indonesia Conference Directory

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are increasingly becoming a means of promoting autonomy, openness, and diversity in university-level learning (Wu & Lee, 2014). However, MOOCs reportedly suffer from staggering drop-out rates reaching 90% (LeClaire & Ferrer, 2014). One reason for such low student engagement is the poor quality of the MOOCs- design (Tay & Musib, 2017). Therefore, it is important to improve the quality of MOOC materials, including instructional videos (Yousef, Chatti, Schroeder, & Wosnitza, 2014). Meanwhile, research on how different formats of content presentation in instructional videos impact student engagement (Guo, Kim, & Rubin, 2014) and learning outcomes is scarce (Li, Kizilcec, Bailenson, & Ju, 2016; Zhang, Zhou, Briggs, & Nunamaker, 2006; Chen & Wu, 2015). The current study therefore contributes to this line of research by evaluating the impact of different formats of content presentation in instructional videos on student engagement and learning outcomes. The study employed videos from the iMOOC (internal MOOC accessible only to the universitys staff and students) ELC003 What-s Your Point? Strategies for Writing Clearly and Concisely created by three instructors from the universitys Centre for English Language Communication (CELC). The participants were twenty-two undergraduate Singaporean students who were asked to watch six instructional videos from the iMOOC and complete relevant quizzes. The study had an experimental design with a pre-test, post-test, and delayed test. Findings suggest that the most engaging video format was the Innovative format (character animation and music). However, the Traditional format (PowerPoint slides with teacher talking head and voiceover) was also acknowledged for its informative, new, and relevant content along with interesting and non-distracting visuals. The respondents- learning outcomes were not significantly correlated to video formats. The study generated recommendations relevant to improving instructional video design not only in this iMOOC, but for MOOCs in general.