Does tagging improve the navigation of online recorded lectures by students?

Students more and more have access to online recordings of the lectures they attend at universities. The volume and length of these recorded lectures however make them difficult to navigate. Research shows that students primarily watch the recorded lectures while preparing for their exams. They do watch the full recorded lectures, but review only the parts that are relevant to them. While doing so, they often lack the required mechanisms to locate efficiently those parts of the recorded lecture that they want to view. In this paper, we describe an experiment where expert tagging is used as a means to facilitate the students' search. In the experiment, 255 students had the option to use tags to navigate 18 recorded lectures. We used the data tracked by the lecture capture system to analyze the use of the tags by the students. We compared these data to students who did not use the tagging interface (TI). Results show that the use of the TI increases in time. Students use the TI more actively over time while reducing the amount of video that they view. The experiment also shows that students who use the TI score higher grades when compared with students who use the regular interface.