Short-form mobile videos to drive student engagement
As California’s first fully online community college, Calbright College offers learners the unique opportunity to work toward industry-recognized certificates through flexibly paced programs that let them work whenever and wherever is best for them. While Calbright’s online and asynchronous format is a key reason many students choose to enroll, it can also make the challenge of keeping learners engaged—a growing problem at colleges and universities across the country—even more pronounced. In partnership with Calbright and UC Irvine, ideas42 explored ways to drive student engagement by leveraging new media formats.
Our approach
ideas42 and Calbright faculty collaboratively developed a series of 60 second vertical-format videos—similar to the kind of user-generated content commonly found on products like TikTok or Instagram Reels. We intentionally differentiated these videos from the institutional style that students might expect from a college or university, leaning into a more authentic format familiar to modern learners that we believed would foster a greater sense of interpersonal connection between students and faculty.
Our first video walked prospective students through steps in the enrollment process and how to complete them.
Another video gave students a personal introduction to their counselor and encouraged them to meet with him.
Our final video offered students midway through their program a brief overview of the career services portal.
The impact
In a series of pilot tests that layered the videos we created into Calbright’s existing text and email communications, this approach led to increases in student engagement with the processes and services that we spotlighted.
In an A/B test of the first video, receiving the video message led to an increased level of persistence through each step of the enrollment process, ultimately leading to a 16% relative increase in the share of students going on to complete their first assignment.
In a pre-post test of the second video, we found that students who were sent the video were around 40% more likely to meet with their counselor.
During a two-week pilot of the third video, we saw meaningfully more clicks per visit to the career services portal as well as a 70% increase in downloads of the resources highlighted in the video compared to the two weeks before the pilot.
These results, in combination with positive feedback from student interviews, demonstrate the versatility and broad application that short form videos can have to drive engagement across the student journey.
What students say…
“This is definitely a more personal kind of introduction … It builds rapport, shows that he actually enjoys doing his job … It makes me feel more comfortable reaching out.”
“[Without the video] I might be more confused about what I can ask about—and be more intimidated to ask for stuff.”
