ASSESSING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF VARYING VIDEO LENGTHS OF EDUCATIONAL VIDEOS ON INFORMATION RETENTION

Abstract

Twenty-first century learning integrates both traditional and digital media to enhance student comprehension, with educational videos becoming essential tools in modern classrooms. One factor that may influence students’ information retention from these videos is their length. Previous studies, such as Manasrah et al. (2021), suggest that very short videos may lack sufficient content, while longer videos risk losing student engagement. This research aims to determine which video length yields better information retention scores among Grade 9 students from a heterogeneously mixed section at St. Mary’s College Inc., Quezon City, in the subjects of Filipino, Araling Panlipunan, and Science. An experimental research design was employed to assess information retention. The process involved administering a pre-test, presenting either a short- or long-form educational video as the intervention, and then conducting a post-test. The section 9-Mapamaraan served as the control group and received the long-form videos, while section 9-Mapitagan was designated as the experimental group and received the short-form videos. The pre- and post-test results were analyzed using a paired t-test in Microsoft Excel. The resulting p-value was compared to a critical value of 0.025, as the test was two-tailed. The short-form videos showed minimal improvement across subjects, with mean score increases in Filipino (+0.9), Araling Panlipunan (+0.3), and Science (+0.4). In contrast, long-form videos produced greater gains in Filipino (+1.35) and Araling Panlipunan (+0.8), though Science showed a slight decrease in mean score (-0.2).  Statistical analysis revealed that long-form videos had a significant impact on information retention in Filipino (p = 0.0015) and Araling Panlipunan (p = 0.0021). Both p-values fell below the critical value (p < 0.025), leading to the rejection of the null hypothesis for these subjects. In Science, however, neither video format produced statistically significant changes, with short-form (p = 0.21) and long-form (p = 0.46) results remaining within the null hypothesis acceptance range.  Notably, while not statistically significant, the short-form video for Science resulted in a slight increase in mean score (+0.4), compared to a slight decrease (-0.2) in the long-form video group. The findings suggest that long-form videos are more effective for comprehension-based subjects such as Filipino and Araling Panlipunan, while short-form videos may be slightly more suitable for technical subjects like science. For future research, it is recommended to expand the scope of subjects, increase the sample size, and include an analysis of learner experiences to gain a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of video length in educational settings.