Is a Video Used as Didactic Content Effective in the Learning Process

The tendency is for video usage to grow in coming years and it will become increasingly important for institutions that produce and use these multimedia materials for their core activities to configure their use in order to evaluate the resources needed. The production of this content requires a sophisticated infrastructure and team to manage the entire process, from recording the videos to editing to distribution. Because this process requires time and production tends to be expensive, it is important for educational institutions to assess the real benefit of using video in teaching and learning environments. Based on this finding, we used a monitoring system to verify the student behavior with regards to didactic video material offered, intending to evaluate the degree of knowledge absorption through this media, as well as their engagement with the subject. In this paper we present three experiments performed with different audiences, including classes from engineering courses. In our experiments we tried to create different scenarios that allowed us to estimate the acceptance of the teaching material in video format, in addition to its impact as an information source. The videos were made available in different situations using both a distance learning environment and a multimedia classroom. In all cases, the audience answered a questionnaire about the subject they were watching to verify the level of information absorption.