Asynchronous Use of Engineering (Materials) Education Videos

Engineering education delivery is dynamic and increasingly asynchronous. An observation that students had very different levels of knowledge and skills as they progressed through our programs, led the authors to use audio/visual media as a leveling intervention. In this effort the authors collected data to determine if audio/visual media can be used to increase performance in the development of a program related task and guide students to higher levels of learning on Blooms Taxonomy through the development of student created learning aids. One specific need was reflected in the disparate skills of our majority component of ‘transfer’ students in our programs. Through informal observations the authors realized students simply did not have familiarity with the equipment at our facility (as opposed to their previous experiences elsewhere). In this study, the authors target one simple skill relevant to resistance welding that could be used as an introduction to metallurgy concepts (welding band saw blades). This student project was used not only to provide students with a practical skill for their applications toolbox but additionally as a way to construct departmental teaching aids for other processes as students synthesize learning and create their own media presentations. The eventual goal of having procedural information readily available for students unfamiliar with specific equipment needed for interdisciplinary projects involving our programs. There were many interesting aspects to this effort. The first involves the creation of audio/visual content because of the many forms (resolution), lengths (venues), and content (audience). The second aspect of interest was the effectiveness of the effort. This was primarily measured through the use of two control groups and the outcomes of the assigned project. Finally, the continuous process improvement information that lead beyond the original intent of creating a single video to a more discrete and relevant approach to doing so guided by student feedback.