Friday, September 20, 2013

What's it like to teach to 10,000 learners in one day? #HDSDA #Analytics @YouTube

I never asked myself this question before as it would have been a hypothetical question. However, on Tuesday this week I managed to reach 10,163 learners on my YouTube channel - the first time the channel has breached the 10,000 views/day milestone. Regular readers of this blog will know that I am not shy about self-indulgently sharing this type of information - below are some of the analytics for views by region. Major English speaking countries such as the USA, UK, Canada, and Australia account for almost 70% of views. Other interesting locations near the bottom of the table (not shown below) are for three views each from Angola, Panama, Georgia, and Morocco. 


On the same day (Tuesday) I had three classes at which about 60 students attended. Reaching out on-line via YouTube to so many other learners in one day is a tremendously satisfying experience, though not as good as the vibe I get in the classroom. While there may be a few views from my own students (there were 164 views from Ireland on Tuesday), almost all of the 10,163 learners are of course unknown to me. I'd love to know how and why they ended up viewing my videos. Just over 60% of traffic sources are from Google or YouTube searches - so I'm guessing that learners are just looking to figure out how to do stuff or solve problems, and go to Google to find out. A growing source of traffic is from YouTube suggested videos - these are "Views from thumbnails appearing on the side of the page of other videos or on the end screen of a video". Google/YouTube are very clever at this.

I'd also of course like to know if the viewers actually found the videos beneficial and useful - did they learn what they needed? Feedback via comments is good, but only a tiny fraction of learners make comments. Unlike my classroom students, my on-line learners will not be tested at the end of a semester! 

As always, a HUGE THANK YOU to all who viewed the videos - it inspires one to keep going and create more videos.

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