Title: How to interpret viewing scenarios in log files from streaming media servers

Authors: Jelle De Boer, Jos Tolboom

Addresses: Faculty of Applied Sciences, Hanze University Groningen, 9701 DA Groningen, The Netherlands. ' Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Groningen, 9701 DA Groningen, The Netherlands

Abstract: When video is offered to students in a Web-based Learning Environment through a streaming video server, digital traces of their viewing behaviour can be collected in log files. These traces can be linked to view behaviours like zapping. According to the literature, a zapping scenario could indicate the broken link between the educational task and the video. The analysis of log files from e-learning systems could tell us something about studying the behaviour. The subject of this explorative research is the possibly interesting patterns in log files from streaming media servers. The setting of the experiment was a polytechnic institute in Groningen (The Netherlands) and it involved three groups of students, 50 in total, who were taking a course on JavaScript. We focused on the relationship between the event clusters in the log files and their related viewing scenarios. The presence of zapping can indicate the need for improvements to either the instruction video or its accompanying task. Based on our analysis of the literature, previous experiments and interviews, we have defined four viewing scenarios: one-pass, two-pass, repetitive and zapping scenario. We found traces of these scenarios in the log files. Further research is necessary to link viewing scenarios to study the behaviour.

Keywords: e-learning; log files; streaming video; viewing scenarios; zapping; online learning; electronic learning; virtual learning; web based learning; viewing behaviour; learning behaviour; The Netherlands.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCEELL.2008.019643

International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning, 2008 Vol.18 No.4, pp.432 - 445

Published online: 18 Jul 2008 *

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