Provides some standards for facilitating MOOCs. Though the document is written for a specific audience, we can certainly borrow the standards to apply elsewhere.
"First, student engagement in educationally purposeful activities is positively related to academic outcomes as repretsented by first year student grades and by persistence between the first and second year of college."
"Second, engagement has a compensatory effect on first-year grades and persistence to the second year of college at the same institution"
"The results suggest that the lowest-ability students benefit
more from engagement than classmates, first-year students and seniors convert different forms of
engagement into academic achievement, and certain institutions more effectively convert student
engagement into higher performance on critical thinking tests.
What is it? This summary of research on Project Based Learning also appears in the BIE book PBL for 21st Century Success. It provides a quick look at key studies showing PBL's positive effects on student academic achievement, mastery of 21st century competences such as problem-solving and critical thinking, addressing the needs of diverse learners and closing achievement gaps, and increasing students' motivation to learn.
With apologies for the title -- some interesting graphs here that demonstrate the level of engagement at various video lengths. Makes the case for short videos. One thing that doesn't seem to be considered is how the video is integrated (or not) with learning activities.