ECON-1 videos for the flipped classroom

This semester I used Explain Everything to add audio and annotations to PPT slides and make short videos for the flipped classroom. The idea is that the order of a contact session is flipped around: the students watch the videos as preparation and spend the time in class discussing and problem solving. I don't have to give a boring lecture and they don't have to listen to one - there is a video for that. My videos look like this:



This weekend I decided to have a quick look at the views that they got over the semester. The videos were uploaded on the module's eFundi site (our LMS) and on YouTube. The number clicks (don't know if they were viewed all the way through) on eFundi were:

EE_Movie_chap 1.mp4	752		EE_Movie_hst 1.mp4	772
EE_Movie_chap 2.1.mp4	294		EE_Movie_hst 2.1.mp4	445
EE_Movie_chap 2.2.mp4	230		EE_Movie_hst 2.2.mp4	331
EE_Movie_chap 2.3.mp4	202		EE_Movie_hst 2.3.mp4	390
EE_Movie_chap 3.mp4	154		EE_Movie_hst 3.mp4	449
EE_Movie_chap 4.1.mp4	203		EE_Movie_hst 4.1.mp4	387
EE_Movie_chap 4.2.mp4	132		EE_Movie_hst 4.2.mp4	306
EE_Movie_chap 4.3.mp4	115		EE_Movie_hst 4.3.mp4	261
EE_Movie_chap 4.4.mp4	96		EE_Movie_hst 4.4.mp4	274
EE_Movie_chap 7.1.mp4	142		EE_Movie_hst 7.1.mp4	274
EE_Movie_chap 7.2.mp4	106		EE_Movie_hst 7.2.mp4	248
EE_Movie_chap 7.3.mp4	88		EE_Movie_hst 7.3.mp4	206
EE_Movie_chap 7.4.mp4	69		EE_Movie_hst 7.4.mp4	187
			EE_Movie_hst 7.5.mp4	212

That is a total of 7325 clicks and an average of 338 for the Afrikaans versions and 198 for the English versions. I hope to be able to split this between students in my group and those from other groups. For all the ECON111 students of around 1150 students, the average views are low, but my group was only 250. I wonder if the videos will be used much for revision before the exam.

Is it worth the effort? It is impossible to tell if it made much of a difference to student performance. We always have a look at the correlation between module marks and number of videos watched but that won't say anything about causation. I do think that it made a difference to the time spent in class. At least I enjoyed not giving a boring lecture and rather working through exercises and presenting interesting examples.