Effective Use Of Videos To Enhance The Teaching And Learning Of Environmental Engineering

Three environmental engineering courses offered at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville involve in the teaching of water treatment subjects. In the past, field trips to local water treatment plants helped students to relate the knowledge they learned in the classroom to real-world applications. Since 9/11/2001, water treatment plants are closed to visits of the general public. Furthermore, increased students’ participations in the teaching process are needed to improve the effectiveness of students’ learning. This paper reports the experience and findings of a project where videos of water treatment subjects were used and integrated in the instructional activities of these courses. The impacts of videos on students’ learning were assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Bloom’s taxonomy on learning levels was used to design the assessment questions for each course. This project found that the use of appropriately selected videos improved the learning environment, increased students interests in learning by promoting active students participation in the learning process, promoted high levels of learning and naturally broke long class session into small attention units, where the effectiveness of student learning were increased. The use of videos also overcame the limitation of lack of field trip opportunities and helped to bring real-world applications to the classroom.