VUC: Visualizing Daily Video Utilization to Promote Student Engagement in Online Distance Education

Online video is widely used in various courses in online distance education (ODE). For ODE students, it is challenging to study multiple online courses and keep track of the video viewing progress each semester. In this paper, we introduce a visualization tool called video utilization calendar (VUC) for promoting student engagement with the videos of multiple online courses. VUC is designed to visualize both the current viewing progress and the daily viewing history for all the courses in a semester for students to check their viewing progress for all videos and choose any course video to view directly. To evaluate VUC, we conducted a randomized controlled trial and a survey in an ODE school. Our results demonstrate that students may spend more days online and view more course videos with the support of VUC, whereas the total video viewing time does not increase significantly. In addition, course instructors identified two patterns of video utilization, which suggests that VUC may also be of assistance to instructors in understanding how students schedule their video viewing for multiple courses.