Update
The PlayPosit Pilot has transitioned to a campus service. For more information visit the PlayPosit Service page.
Conclusion of the PlayPosit pilot
The Academic Technology Design Team (ATDT) and Academic Technology Application Program (ATAP) piloted PlayPosit as an interactive video tool solution for the CU Boulder campus throughout the Spring 2017, Fall 2017, and Spring 2018 semesters.
The goals of this pilot were to see if an interactive video quizzing tool would meet campus needs, to work with the vendor as they continuously improve accessibility of their interface, to review how the integration of PlayPosit would work within the CU Boulder ecosystem, and to implement a scaffolded support structure at CU Boulder which relies on PlayPosit for ongoing training and troubleshooting.
Originally, this project was scoped to be a Spring 2017 pilot as we explored use cases and integrated the tool within D2L. When the campus community chose Canvas as the future LMS, the decision was made to continue the pilot for an additional year. This additional year of the pilot allowed for the the ATDT and ATAP to continue reviewing PlayPosit as we support users across both LMS’s.
The Pilot of PlayPosit has now concluded at CU Boulder with positive feedback from both instructors and students, resulting in it joining the OIT Service catalog. Visit the PlayPosit Service page to start utilizing this service, or if you would like information concerning the completed PlayPosit pilot, contact the IT Service Center at oithelp@colorado.edu or 303-735-4357 (5-HELP).
Lessons Learned
The PlayPosit Pilot concluded in the spring 2018, with 3893 users, including students and instructors, cumulatively during Fall 2017 & Spring 2018. About 10 instructors utilized PlayPosit heavily during the pilot, having videos ranging from six to 104 in their courses. Another 15 or so instructors tested the system lightly but did not implement it in a course.
Instructors who used PlayPosit extensively found it a useful tool for learners to explore, analyze and apply concepts at their own pace in a flipped or blended setting.
Pilot instructors stated PlayPosit was an effective tool for:
- Authoring enriched video content with interactions
- Providing feedback to students, which increased long-term retention of concepts
- Giving instructors a convenient means to monitor student progress and understanding of core concepts
We recommend a blended support structure when implementing PlayPosit at scale:
- Direct support of instructors should be provided by the PlayPosit vendor
- This agreement to provide should be included in the contract language
End of Pilot Survey
Throughout the pilot, we surveyed instructors to gauge their experience with the PlayPosit vendor. At the end of the pilot, we surveyed 52 instructors who had logged into the PlayPosit interface. We had 12 instructors who completed the survey and provided feedback. The results of this assessment show patterns as to how instructors are implementing in-video quizzing within their courses.
The results of the analysis show a positive evaluation of PlayPosit. Overall, the instructors surveyed found PlayPosit attractive, perspicuous, efficient, dependable, stimulating, and novel. The survey also asked a number of free response questions about instructors’ experience with the tool.
PlayPosit allows instructors to remove lecture segments from the classroom setting and instead place lecture content online for students to complete outside of class. This change increases class time for active learning, small group work, and activities to increase student engagement.
Playposit was excellent! The students loved it, we used PlayPosit for 2-4 pre-class screencasts each day of class (close to 40 class periods). It is an excellent way to prepare students for class!
We have a lot of video content for the students to consume. Breaking up the consumption of this content with this service allows the student to remain engaged and for us to understand what they are learning.
In the "Video Capsules" created for our class, we utilized the multiple choice and free response questions in nearly every video to facilitate students' thinking about a concept in different ways. We also occasionally used the fill in the blank questions, but those are more difficult to work with in nature. We also provided "Key Ingredients" - a short summary of what we want the students to learn from each video - in D2L along with the video for students to review before starting the video.
Instructors stated their students felt in-video quizzing broke up the lectures and gave them an opportunity to actively reflect on what they just saw.
The students really enjoyed the combination of screencasts and quizzes. They felt that it broke up the material and forced them to have an active reflection on what they just saw.
Watching our course content vs. engaging in our course content is made possible with this product.
Instructors noticed, students retained more information and applied those concepts in their work after watching and completing in-video quizzes.
I used it in videos of my lecture that students had to watch before class. Based on feedback from student, embedding questions through the lecture was better than all at the end; multiple attempts to complete the formative questions was good, as is letting them use rewind and fast forward.
I used PlayPosit to have students engage with the video content for 2 20 minute videos. Students would pause and answer a multiple choice or T/F question.
Instructors who implemented in-video quizzing were able to review the most missed questions before class and then discussed those concepts in class with their students.
Took most missed questions and went over in class.
First, it worked well to use as many different question types as possible in the videos to encourage students to think about the material in different ways. It also worked well to preface the video with a summary of the learning goals for the video so that students know what to expect prior to the video. Lastly, because of the default (set) point values for each question type, it seemed that there was a minimum amount of questions that needed to be included in order for a student’s score to match their effort in completing the video.
What is PlayPosit?
This interactive video tool allows you to customize the student experience by layering your own custom lesson (quiz questions, text prompts, images, etc.) over video content. Using video from YouTube, Kaltura or other sources, you can add images, text, or a variety of quiz questions, share the lesson with your students for completion, and then monitor student activity and engagement through the analytics collected by the platform. PlayPosit also allows you to incorporate feedback and can be an excellent platform for formative assessment.
Why pilot interactive video tools?
As more courses employ flipped tutorials and other online video content for instruction and assessment, our campus will increasingly need a tool to easily create interactive video lessons and gather data regarding student activity and engagement. CU Boulder’s Massive Open Online Courses can harness a proprietary in-video quiz software from Coursera, but that technology is not available to our campus at large. While OIT's VoiceThread service meets some of these needs, VoiceThread is better suited for highly interactive and open-ended verbal discussions around various media and is less suited for use with video.
Check out our interactive video tools comparison chart to learn more about PlayPosit and how it compares to other solutions.
