2014 International Conference of Educational Innovation through Technology
How Micro Lecture Videos Triggers the Motivation of Learners of Coursera: A
comparative Study based on ARCS Mode
Hui Deng
School of Computer and Information science
South West University
Chongqing, China
e-mail: denghui@swu.edu.cn
Yingshan Tang
School of Computer and Information science
South West University
Chongqing, China
e-mail: 1163248285@qq.com
Abstract—The relatively low retention rates of learners have an
implication that learners might disengage in a MOOC course.
Engagement and motivation always go hand in hand. The
elaborate design of strategies to trigger and retain learners’
motivation is helpful to increase the rates of course completion.
To address this, we applied content analysis method to analyze
the micro lecture videos of six courses in Coursera according to
ARCS model of motivation suggested by Keller. This study
reports the categories of the strategies to motivate learner that
used in these videos and the differences between Chinese
produced and other countries produced video courses. These
results inform some suggestions of future design suggestions
for Micro instructional videos.
Keywords: Micro lecture videos; motivation; ARCS Model ;
Cousera;
I. INTRODUCTION
With the popularity of Khan Academy, Coursera, edX
and Udacity, Micro instructional video has been attracting
the attention of educators and researchers. Micro
instructional video is defined as a kind of brief video that
contain the instruction of micro knowledge points, the length
of which is always about 5-8 minutes and the longest is not
more than 15 minutes, which makes it possible for student to
learning at his own pace at anytime and anywhere. Studies
by Dr. McGrew and Dr. Kee[1] suggested micro
instructional video could be traced back to the 60-second
course. In contrast to one traditional longer educational
video, micro instructional video shows distinguishing
features on producing and usage. Those old principles
concluded from the first two kinds of videos cannot be
simply applied for it. As a still newly emerging innovation
companied the prosperity of flipping classroom and MOOCs,
micro instructional video calls for special concern and
research on it.
978-1-4799-4230-5/14 $31.00 © 2014 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/EITT.2014.28
Yinjuan Shao
Training Center
Bank of Communications
Shanghai, China
e-mail: yinjuan@gmail.com
Zenong Qin
Educational Technology Center
Logistical Engineering University
Chongqing, China
e-mail: long9393@sina.com
It was reported that the completion rate of MOOC is less
than7% [2].Some further studies found reasons accounting
for the low retention rates include lecture fatigue [3], which
was in rank 4 of 10 reasons, and lack of self-
motivation[4].This information indicated those learners did
not be motivated.
Motivation is the critical element in education. It has
impacts on the persistence and retention [5, 6]. Actually,
some studies found that students in MOOCs mostly spent
much time on watching Videos and most of them always
skipped other course components [7, 8]. Therefore, due to
the importance of videos in MOOCs, it is necessary to
explore how to decrease the lecture fatigue and enhance the
motivation of students.
As a step toward this goal, this paper presents a
comparative study of motivation design in micro
instructional video and tries to answer two questions as
following:
z What strategies have been used to trigger the
students’ motivation and improve the engagement of
students? It can be basis on study further the design
of motivation.
z Are there any differences in motivation strategies
between the micro instructional videos produced by
Chinese staffs and those produced by other
countries’? The answer might tell us whether
different countries can learn from each other, and
lead us to think more motivation associated with
different culture.
By answer these two questions, this paper aims to
provide instructional designer with insights for designing
more engaging micro lecture videos.
II. RELATED WORK
Motivation has always been a key issue in education.
However, Current focuses on Micro lecture video are mostly
about the producing technology or process and principles of
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design. Only a few studies touched the method to motivate
learners.
The legibility of learning material is an element that
impacts the engagement of learners. Cross et al [2] surveyed
150 people on edX and Mechanical Turk found that typeface
and handwriting both had its advantages and disadvantages.
Hence they suggested a hybrid called Type Righting which
could combine the benefits of both.
Guo et al [9]conducted an empirical study to find how
video production affects students’ engagement. They
classified 842 videos of 4 EdX courses into four types:
recorded classroom lecture, instructor’s talking head, khan-
style digital tablet drawing and PowerPoint slide
presentations, and then mined the edX server logs to obtain
over 6.9 million video watching sessions from almost
128,000 students. Finally, they found that the length of
lecture video does matter for the engagement of students.
Shorter videos were more engaging. Among four styles,
Talking head and Khan-style tutorials were more engaging.
To get high engagement, teachers must plan their lesson in
advance and speak fairly fast with high enthusiasm.
Kizilcec et al [10]identified four trajectories of
engagement by analyzing the rich data generated during
learners who learned three computer science courses.
Interestingly, they found those engaged the course from
beginning to end did not take any assessments.
Although these studies explored some issues that could
lead to engagement. However, they didn’t systematically
discuss the strategies could be used in planning micro
instructional video to motivate student to be more engaging.
There is still a gap to fill to consider the motivation of
engage in the design. As compared to the above studies, this
study employed ARCS model of motivation as the
framework to identify systematically what strategies have
been used in producing micro instructional video, what
strategies have been ignored. Moreover, this paper was to
give some suggestions on integrating motivation tactics into
develop micro instructional video.
III. METHODOLOGY
Content analysis is a method making inferences by
objectively and systematically identifying specified
characteristics of messages [11]. In this section, the method
was depicted form four parts including selecting videos,
forming categories table, coding unit and process and
reliability.
A. Videos selection
In this paper, 6 courses provided by Coursera in the
winter 2013, were divided into three groups: Literature and
history courses including “The Red Chamber Dream” by
Taiwan National university and “History of the Slave South”
by University of Pennsylvania; computing courses including
“Data Structures and Algorithms” by Peking university and
“Learn to Program: Crafting Quality Code ”by University of
Toronto and Social sciences courses including “People &
Networks” by Peking university and “Inspiring Leadership
through Emotional Intelligence” by Case Western Reserve
University.
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These 6 courses covered totally 327 mini-videos, the
duration of each video varied from 1-30 minutes. Some
considerations were taking for the amount of each series
course, time length and sequence of each video in the series
such as beginning, middle and the ending when selecting
videos. In the end, totally 60 videos were chosen, and the
length of each video was about 7-10 minutes on average
B. Forming categories of motivation tacits
A prober model of motivation, the ARCS Model, is the
base making the study success. From abundant studies on
motivation, we choose ARCS model as the analysis
frameworks. The reasons we chose it were two:(1) it is a
maturity model that suits for different learners.(2) It provides
detail guidance to incorporate motivation strategies into
instructional activities which had been proved reliable and
valid.
ARCS Model contains four variables (Attentions,
Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction) and each variable
has several sets of conditions [12, 13].There are 60
conditions in total of conditions that have to be met to fully
motivate learners.
However ARCS model was not developed for video-
based learning. There were much difference between in-
person teaching and online video-based learning.
Considering that the information delivery in the context of
video watching was always single way, the possibilities are
minimal for learners to interact with video in the format of
answering question or doing exercises. Therefore we
excluded those apparently unsuited sections for video
instructional, i.e. “satisfaction” which required high
interaction. Finally, only 3 variables and 35 sub-tactics were
adopted as the analysis categories in this research. Figure 1
shows the details of this scheme.
C. Coding unit and example.
In this study, a length of 30 seconds was defined as an
analysis unit, which means an 8 minutes video was divided
into 16 units.
The researcher watched each 30-second video clips and
identified which strategy were used in this unit, and then
marked it on the categories table. For example, when in the
first unit of 4.1 video in The Red Chamber Dream
(V1C1G1), teacher said “Understanding of aristocratic life
can help us rethink a few opinions about characteristics in
the book which seems to be self-evident, i.e. the
interpretation of the character Baochai Xue ”could be coded
into two categories, which were A11 and R21.Table I shows
the coding sheet of this sample.
TABLE I. A SAMPLE OF CODING
V1C1G1 categories
00:00-00:30 A11R21
D. Reliability
In this study, all the coding work was completed by one
researcher. A percentage Inter-rater reliability (IRR) was
used due to the complexity of coding. Two other researchers
joined the reliability test work. One video clip per video
course was selected randomly for the coding reliability test. Canadian course “Learn to Program: Crafting Quality Code”
At the end only 4% of coding results were different. (C4G2).
TABLE III. STRATEGIES USED IN GROUP 2
IV. RESULTS Strategies C3G2 C4G2
Total coding units 178 144
A. The First group videos:Literature and history courses Attention
A11 0 2
Results for the comparative analysis to two courses “The A21 34 53
Red Chamber Dream” (C1G1) and “History of the Slave A22 70 51
South” (C2G1) were shown in the following Table II. A31 2 3
A32 75 76
TABLE II. STRATEGIES USED IN GROUP1 A33 54 5
Strategies C1G1 C4G2 A34 1 0
A53 13 1
Total coding units 186 177 Relevance
attention R11 0 2
A11 12 0 R12 0 4
A21 4 8 R21 0 1
A22 69 55
A23 66 32
As we can see from the Table 3, in programming courses
A31 10 10 the proportion of motivational strategies application were
A32 43 28 78.09% (Chinese course) and 86.80% (Canadian course).
A33 29 22 “Attention” strategy again became the major strategy used,
Relevance in which again A2 and A3 were the main strategies.
R11 1 2 Specifically in the course of "data structures and algorithms”,
R12 3 1
R21 4 0
A22 (Give examples of every instructionally important
Those literature and history courses were generally concept or principle), A32 (Vary the format of instruction
teacher-led, while totally motivational strategies applied in according to the attention span of the audience.) and A33
these two videos were 93.55% for “The Red Chamber (change instructional media) were most common motivation
Dream” and 68.92% for “History of the Slave South”. It strategies, followed by A21 (Show visual representations of
shows that motivational strategies were applied more any important object or set of ideas or relationships), while
frequently in Chinese videos than American ones. proportions of other strategies were relatively small. A very
“Attention” came as the most frequent strategy used in these small amount of Relevance strategy was used and
videos. A2 “Concreteness” appeared most often, followed by Confidence was not used.
A3 (Variability). In A2, attention strategies such as A22 In Canadian video lecture of "Learn to Program: Crafting
(Give examples of every instructionally important concept or Quality Code “, A32 was the top frequent used strategy,
principle.) and A23 (Use content-related anecdotes, case followed by the A21 (Show visual representations of any
studies, biographies, etc.) as well as A32 (Vary the format of important object or set of ideas or relationships) and A22
instruction) and A33 (Vary the medium of instruction) were (Give examples of every instructionally important concept or
applied very often. While other types of strategies like principle) while other motivational strategies were rather less
Relevance (correlation) are less used, for Relevance used used or not used. A2 (Concreteness) and A3 (Variability)
rarely, and Confidence (confidence) was not used at all. were motivation strategies speaker accustomed to use.
In literature and history courses , lecturers prefer A23 Strategy of A32 (change education in the form of
(Use content-related anecdotes, case studies, biographies, (information presentation, exercises, tests, etc.) was usually
etc.) strategy , mainly delivered a lecture with case studies or used by represent information of different types with forms,
stories to attract students attention as slight Relevance animation and drawings. Despite different lecturers might
strategy (R1) was used at the same time. Also lecturers have different teaching styles, some abnormal cases, rhythm
tended to deploy strategies like A32 (Vary the format of changes of expression and humor were helpful to increase
instruction) and A33 (Vary the medium of instruction). the fun of those courses.
Lecturers tried to draw students’ attention with pictures, C. The third group videos:Social Sciences courses
forms and videos, triggering their learning motivation, not
The contents of social science courses were relatively
just only changing the methods of representation and media.
closer to our daily lives. Except the strategy of “attention”
Body language, change of tune also assisted to attract the
was used, quite a few relevance strategies were applied.
students to avoid boredom and enhance efficiency.
Scholars or teachers might connect to our daily lives, which
B. The Second group videos:Programming courses made lectures more vivid and effective. Results of
In programming courses lecturers spent lots of time on comparison between two courses: “People & Networks”
introducing an example of a function or a concept. The (C5G3) and “Inspiring Leadership through Emotional
following Table III illustrates our analysis to the Chinese Intelligence” (C6G3) were listed in Table IV.
course “Data Structures and Algorithms” (C3G2) and

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 TABLE IV. STRATEGIES USED IN GOUP3 contents may be abstract and profound, excessive statements
C5G3 C6G3 and explanations were necessary such as adding language
expression and more intuitive image. So that learner would
Total coding units 197 176 be more easily to accept. Social science courses have more
Attention
links with learners’ daily life. However statistical results
A11 2 2
A12 1 0 indicated Chinese instructors did not pay enough attention to
A21 29 5 connect the knowledge in class with everyday lives. This
A22 64 67 would have an impact on the learning interest and learning
A23 14 30 outcomes.
A31 0 27 Second, both Chinese and Northern American lecturers
A32 80 67 preferred A22 (Give examples of every instructionally
A33 6 0 important concept or principle.) and A32 (Vary the format of
A35 0 10
instruction according to the attention span of the audience)
A43 1 0
A53 1 7 strategies in their lectures. All these facts showed that
Relevance lecturers in those mini video courses could apply more
R11 5 3 variety of motivational strategies in their teaching, not just
R12 13 3 reuse the same strategies in their courses. To deliver
R21 16 7 knowledge through stories and multimedia such visualized
R31 0 3 forms would be more acceptable.
In social science videos, the speakers were still used to
take “Attention” strategy. Out of the 160 and 166 records, TABLE V. STRATEGIES USED IN BOTH AREAS
motivational strategies for Chinese and American course china North America
were 81.22 % and 94.32% respectively. It indicated that A11 14 4
motivational strategies were more used in American courses, A12 1 0
in which again the “attention” strategies were most A21 67 66
frequently applied as “relevance” strategies were used A22 203 173
occasionally, while other strategies were not used at all. As it A23 80 62
is shown in the figure below, the main motivation strategies A31 12 40
were A22 and A32 as well. A32 198 171
A33 89 27
Similar to previous two groups of mini video courses, 1 0
A34
lecturers in social science still preferred Attention strategies A35 0 10
A22 and A32. Although more relevance strategies could be A43 1 0
applied to make a link with daily life in this type of course, A53 14 8
facts showed that they were still rarely used through our R11 6 7
analysis. In fact, cases and stories occurred in daily life could R12 16 8
inspire self-confidence in order to maintain a high learner R21 20 8
motivation for those learners. R31 0 3
Third, both Chinese and Northern American video
V. DISCUSSION AND RECOMENDATION courses had similar shortcomings in applying different kinds
of motivational strategies. 14 and 13 kinds (see Table V) of
A. Discussions different motivational strategies in Chinese and in American
The analysis results of above three groups’ videos courses respectively were chosen and 11 kinds of strategies
triggered further considerations. were the same. namely A11, A21, A22, A23, A31, A32, A53
First, motivational strategies were both greatly used in (Give learners the opportunity to select topics, projects and
Chinese and North American videos in MOOCs, which were assignments that appealed to their curiosity and need to
at a considerable proportion of 84.31% (all Chinese courses) explore), R11 (State explicitly how the instruction builds on
and 83.10 % (all North American courses) of the total the learner's existing skills.), R12 (Use analogies familiar to
number of statistics respectively. American courses seemed the learner from past experience.), R21 (State explicitly the
not to do as well as Chinese courses in literature and history present intrinsic value of learning the content, as distinct
modules, but they did better in programming modules and from its value as a link to future goals). Meanwhile, with
social science modules. respect to a total of 60 kinds of motivational strategies, only
Therefore more motivational strategies should be 20% categories of strategies were covered. These micro
considered in literature and history modules for American video courses were more lecture-like; more interactions
instructors as motivational strategies should be considered in between the students and teachers could be designed and
programming modules and social sciences modules for introduced to these courses.
Chinese instructors. For literature and history courses, As above, micro lecture videos were relatively short
tedious feed-in style of teaching should be avoided as comparing to traditional courses. As instructors of
students may feel tired and boring then eventually lose instructional designers had to delete some relevance for
interest of learning. Similarly, in programming courses, the learning, less consideration of motivational strategies were

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found. In another word, in these videos we studied, most
motivational strategies appeared for easy knowledge delivery
for teachers but not for the purpose of triggering and
maintaining students’ motivation. These courses seemed to
be more teacher-led than student-led. For specific
introduction and presentation, teachers preferred to use A2
and A3 and rarely rather few strategies of confidence were
found. One possible explanation to this was because the
structure and time limitation of micro instructional videos,
some strategies were reduced. However, to keep the course
more attractive and fun to keep their students continue to
learn, improvements were needed on the application of
motivational strategies.
B. Recommendations
Based on the above analysis to design aspects of
motivation, we have the following suggestions for instructors
and designers of micro instructional videos:
Firstly, Motivational strategies should be added to the
process of course design as soon as possible. According to
Amusable’s theory of motivation, learners’ in distance
learning motivation includes: cognitive drive, self-
enhancement drive and subsidiaries driving force [14].Every
learner had an internal cognitive motivation with which
learners would like to know and comprehend things around
them, to master knowledge or to solve problems. Distant
learners were greatly affected by the organization of learning
materials and the learning process. Therefore, motivational
strategies should be considered into the whole process and
each stages of design. The high drop-out rates of MOOCs
may imply that we need to take more motivational strategies
into account to improve the design of micro instructional
videos.
Secondly, instructional designers should consider how to
better and efficiently apply motivational strategies. More
specific ARCS motivational strategies should be analyzed in
depth to make it easy for practice. On the basis of the
analysis to the motivational design in these courses, in the
actual teaching and learning process, teachers may target
each specific teaching strategy to operationalize different
motivations to achieve learning objectives and higher
learning efficiency. For example, such strategy like A31 (In
stand up delivery, vary the tone of your voice, and use body
movement, pauses, and props) can be easily and straightly
operated in real practice as following:
• properly change the posture during explains
• teaching with gestures
• gestures to express the rhythm
• with a tone up and down according to the contents
Third, the application of Confidence may also be applied
to instructional design of micro MOOC courses, such as
strategies under C1: C11 (Incorporate clearly stated,
appealing learning goals into instructional materials), C12
(Provide self-evaluation tools which are based on clearly
stated goals) and C13 (Explain the criteria for evaluation of
performance). Guidance of learning goal and learning criteria
for evaluation could assist the confidence building in
learning to avoid giving up.
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Fourth, teachers and instructional designers in China and
North American should learn from each other. Chinese
should consider using more subjective motivational
strategies, namely speakers themselves also need to improve
their expressive force. American instructors may apply more
changes on multimedia aids and cases studies, making the
knowledge more visualized and substantiate to enhance
learners’ motivation for learning.
VI. COUNCLUSION AND LIMITATION
Elaborate design before producing videos helped
improve the engagement of students. [9]However, few
existing studies addressed the design method of videos to
make student motivating and get t more engaging. This study
firstly modified the ARCS model to suit for video-based
learning, and then comparative motivation strategies used by
60 videos from Coursera. The findings and recommendations
given in this paper inform teachers and designers a direction
to develop more engaging micro lecture videos.
In this study, all analysis was based on the ARCS
motivation model. Lots of limitations need to be noted here
however. First, the video analysis could be improved by
inviting more researchers to join and follow-up reliability
tests are necessary. Second, ARCS Model has its own
limitations, which it was not easy to be operated.
Furthermore, this study only focused on the videos rather
than discussions after the course. And limitation of the
results may be raised by those courses and subjects we had
chosen too.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by Fundamental Research
Funds for the Central Universities under Grant No.
XDJK2014A002.
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