Clean Energy

The Clean Energy Lab is taken by a cohort of taught Postgraduate students. These students are primarily international students, with English as an additional language. We were interested to see whether this cohort of students found this style of video beneficial.

The lab activity comprises four parts. I made a Tasty-style video for each part:

• Solar panels

• Wind turbines

• Electrolysis of water

• Hydrogen fuel cells

An example video for Part 3 (Electrolysis of Water) is shown below.

This cohort of students had a higher baseline of engagement from 2021/22. Before changing to Tasty-style videos, we already had approximately 78% of the class viewing the videos. The video analytics data for each video is shown below.

The change to "Tasty"-style videos in 2022/23 did not lead to an increase in the percentage of the class viewing the videos. That said, the baseline was already very high, with an average of 78% of the class viewing the videos in 2021/22, compared to 73% in 2022/23. In any case, the students were still engaging with the "Tasty"-style videos at a comparable rate.

The completion rate of the videos (the percentage of the video watched) showed an interesting trend. In all cases the the completion rate increased compared to 2021/22. In 2021/22 the completion rate increased from Part 1 to Part 4, however for 2022/23 the completion rate decreased. This might reflect the fact that in 2021/22, the percentage of the class viewing Part 4 dropped compared to Part 1. However, in 2022/23 the percentage of the class viewing each part of the experiment was similar.  This might mean that in 2021/22, those watching the video for Part 4 were those more likely to watch it to the end. It might also indicate that in 2022/23, the students were watching the videos multiple times, and focusing on the part they were stuck on, so were not necessarily watching the videos to the end. The completion rate was still above 80% for all of the experiments. 

From the video analytics results for this module and for Foundation Year Chemistry, we can see that there are benefits to student engagement for two very different cohorts: Foundation Year home students, and Masters-level International students. This gives us confidence that this video style could be beneficial for a wide range of Engineering students, levels and disciplines.