Rating Videos-The Brutal Truth
As a teacher I have always believed in student evaluations as a meaningful tool to gauge my work. Over the years we have used many methods to quantify the opinions of people who attend our live events. We have used this data to adjust various components of our work. The changes we have made as a result of student feed back have kept our approach to education, fresh and unique.
6 years ago we made the transition from a “Live Event” education company to a full circle education company offering our content through a series of web based learning applications. We immediately decided that we needed to seek the opinions of our on line audience by asking them to rate each education episode at the conclusion of viewing. We felt this approach would serve as a meaningful measurement tool for our learning management system’s effectiveness.
When deciding what would be the best method for asking for the feedback we traveled down the YouTube Highway and simply mirrored their 1 to 5 star approach. This decision seemed logical enough and we felt strongly this would help us make decisions about future content development. As the ratings began to flow in through the system we were puzzled by the data we received.
I seemed that on line students took an all or nothing approach to ranking content. Any other words, it was either 5 or 1 in most cases. This phenomenon really skewed the data and didn’t provide us with the answers we were seeking. I am sure there are many reasons why this approach is true of on line learners. My opinion is fairly cut and dried. I believe powerful videos … meaningful messages … create impact and therefore action by the viewer. Anything less seems to result in a more apathetic action on the part of the viewing audience.
I recently was sent a blog by great friends at Big Bang Technology regarding the same subject. This blog seems to share my opinion and is from the good folks at You Tube. In fact, I thought you might find their information useful so I have included a link to their blog. http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.html
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