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EchoVideo: Weighted Engagement - Defining and Customizing

Echo360
  • Updated

The Weighted Engagement score shown in the Student Analytic data is a calculation of student engagement based on metric weighting that YOU customize to make that figure meaningful to YOU. The Weighting tab on the Analytics page for a course provides sliders that allow you to specify how important each metric is relative to the other metrics. This creates YOUR definition of "engagement".

All metrics are evenly weighted by default, as shown in the below figure. Drag the slider handles left and right to change the percentage weighting for each metric. Notice that the percentages change for all the sliders, to accommodate more or less weight given to the changing metric.

The Weighting tab also provides a small set of presets you can use outright, or select and use as a base for your own settings. See Understanding engagement presets below.

Weighting, if changed, must be done for EACH COURSE/SECTION; your preferences do not carry over to other sections.

Engagement Weighting tab with sliders and preset buttons as described

Below is a brief definition of each metric you can weight and how the per-class weighting works. See Definitions of Analytics Data Metrics for a more detailed description of each of the metrics provided by EchoVideo.

  • Attendance - This is a binary metric; either the student attended a class or did not. 100% for yes, 0% for no. "Attended a class" means:
    • The student entered the online classroom during class time,
      OR
    • If the class does not have a date/time, the student interacted with the class in some way (viewed the video or slides, posted a question or response, or took notes).

  • Video Views - This refers to Video View percentage, and is the percent of the total video (or audio or interactive media) in a class, or across classes, that a student has viewed. This includes the percentage of the Live stream a student viewed, if the stream was performed through a Pro, a Pod, or a Universal Capture installation. See also the note below about analytics and live streams from SCHD appliances.

  • Presentation Views - This refers to Slide View percentage, and is the percent of the total slide deck in a class, or across classes, that a student has viewed.
    IMPORTANT DETAIL: This percentage is calculated based on NON-POLLING slides in the deck. Meaning if you have a 10 slide deck but 4 of those slides are polling slides, then the percentage viewed will be out of 6 and not out of 10. This addresses the situation where a student enters the classroom and ONLY goes to the polling slides to respond to questions and does not actually view the other slides in the deck.

  • Q&A - Similar to Attendance, this is a binary metric; did the student participate in class discussion or not. Students get 100% credit for Q&A if they post a question or a response to a question, either in the classroom or in the Q&A tab with a class selected. If they did not post, it is 0% for that class.

  • Notes - Similar to Q&A, this is a binary metric; did the student take any notes or not. Students get 100% credit for the "Notes" metric if they entered text into the Notes panel in the classroom, or added notes into their Study Guide for a particular class. If they did not post notes, it is a 0% for that class.

  • Activities - This uses the Activity Participation scoring and is whether or not a student is answering the polling questions posted in classrooms. It does not take into consideration whether the answers are correct or not; simply that they have provided responses. This applies to both polling slides in a presentation and polling questions in interactive media.

Analytics for LIVE classes using SCHDs - Viewing data for Live Streamed Classes is NOT available for live streams from legacy SCHD appliances. An easy way to tell if your Live streams are from SCHDs or not is to see whether there is an active "time-elapsed" stamp at the bottom of the classroom. If there is none, the stream is from the older capture device and will not provide live stream viewing data for students.
See the Definitions of Analytics Data Metrics page for more details, specifically: Attendance Percentage, Video View, and Video View %.

Changing Metric Weighting for Engagement

You can change your calculation of engagement at any time by dragging the slider handles left and right and then applying your changes. Weighted Engagement percentages change as soon as you click Apply. This allows you to apply weighting changes, go to the Students tab and see the difference (sorting the list as necessary), export the data to a CSV file or to your LMS gradebook, then make other Weighting changes and apply those.
Students tab on the Analytics page showing Weighted Engagement for a class

To adjust weighting to define engagement scoring

  1. Access the Course you need from the EchoVideo Home page to open the Class List.
    Alternately, if you enter EchoVideo through an LMS, enter the course the way you normally do.
  2. Click the Analytics page.
  3. Select Weighting from the left side of the page, as shown in the figure at the top of the page.
  4. By default, all of the metrics are evenly weighted. You have the following options:
    • Manually slide the "handle" of each bar left and right to increase or decrease the weight that metric has in student engagement scoring. All weighting is relative - see note below.
    • Click one of the Presets provided. See Understanding engagement presets below.
    • Do both! Select a Preset, then customize it by moving the slider to the right or left as appropriate.

      All metrics add up to 100%: The "weight" of each metric is a portion of 100% - meaning if you increase one metric, the rest of the metrics must decrease by a corresponding amount. This is reflected in the percentages shown to the right of each slider.

  5. Click APPLY to apply these settings to this course.
  6. Click RESET to return the metrics to their original (or last saved) settings.
    You must do this before clicking Apply if you want to return to the settings as they were when you entered the page.

Targeted Weighted Engagement Score

Some instructors want to isolate viewing data specifically, and in some cases export ONLY viewing percentage information into their LMS gradebook. This is most easily done by changing one or both of the Views sliders (Video and/or Presentation) to their maximum weight, and changing all of the others to 0. This recalculates the Weighted Engagement score to rely solely on view percentages, providing an easy way to determine and export viewing data.

See Using Weighting Sliders to make Engagement Equal to a Single Metric for more information.

Understanding Engagement Presets

The Engagement Presets are designed to weight the metrics in a way that reflects the importance of that preset. The three presets provided reflect the most common engagement types used by instructors to determine whether a student is properly participating in the class or not.

These can be used as they are defined in the preset, or they can be used as a base from which you may customize your definition of "what's important".

For example: The In Class Learning preset weighs Attendance and Activities participation very highly, but Video Views (performed outside of class) very low. The idea is that the video in most classes is a capture (recording) of the lecture. If the student is to be IN class during the lecture, they don't necessarily need to watch it again outside of class.

Click each preset to see what settings are used there, and feel free to adjust them for your own needs. NO CHANGES ARE APPLIED until you click Apply.