Investigating the effect of nudges for improving comment quality in active video watching

Abstract

Developing and maintaining constructive engagement is a crucial challenge in learning by watching videos. AVW-Space is an online video-based learning platform which enhances student engagement via note-taking and personalised support. Previous studies with AVW-Space show that students who write comments, especially high-quality comments, learn more. The goal of the study reported in this paper is to encourage students to write better-quality comments. After automating the assessment of comment quality using machine learning approaches, we developed Quality nudges which encourage students to write better comments. We conducted a study in a first-year engineering course to analyse the learning effects of the Quality nudges. The results show that Quality nudges enhanced constructive engagement and learning. The contribution of this research is in proposing methodology for increasing the quality of student comments in video-based learning.