Using Recorded Lectures and Low Stakes Online Quizzes to Improve Learning Efficiency in Undergraduate Engineering Courses

STEM disciplines, especially at research universities, have been measurably slow to integrate online modalities into undergraduate classes. Current and future students are now “digital natives” interacting with the world and absorbing information in a very “YouTube” style, characterized by short, on-demand, and entertaining chunks of information. Faculty have been reticent to adopt what they perceive to be unproven technologies while administrators often are unable to allow faculty extra time or budget to investigate the efficacy of new approaches to teaching. This paper describes the results of experiments designed to help improve this situation by accessing the effectiveness of two key online modalities that are often the easiest first steps for faculty to adopt and can be very effective in improving the operational effectiveness and learning outcomes of the course: Recorded lectures and Online Quizzes. Recorded lectures and Quizzes were integrated into two undergraduate engineering courses. The two courses were a sophomore level Dynamics class and a senior level Finite Element Analysis course. The Dynamics course is required and the enrollments range from 160-360, and the Finite Element Analysis course is an elective with enrollments between 60-80. In the Dynamics course, recorded lectures were often used in place of the live lecture and the in-class lecture time was often “flipped” and used for discussion and interaction rather than a traditional one-way lecture. In the Finite Element Analysis course, the lectures were recorded and made available to the students prior to the in-class version of the lecture. Quizzes were designed as an assessment tool (rather than purely for grading) aimed at "real time" feedback. This allowed both students and instructors to measure the learning achievements in the previous week of the course and let the instructor modify the subsequent week’s lectures accordingly. The results show that student-reported learning efficiency improves when recorded lectures are utilized. This was the case whether the class period was subsequently used to teach a similar lecture or if lecture time was flipped to provide more interactive discussion based learning. The availability of recorded lectures prior to class did not affect students’ decision to attend class. Students reported that having weekly “low stakes” quizzes and reviewing them in class helped them understand key concepts better. These results provide more evidence of an ever increasing amount of data that supports the learning efficiency gains that can be attained using a variety of hybrid course pedagogy and online learning modalities. P ge 24341.2 The debate over the need to adjust teaching methodologies based on the prominence of Digital Natives within undergraduate college courses has continued since the term originated (Presnky, 2001) early in this millennium. Recent studies have focused this debate away from the terminology and towards those activities that can help improve learning outcomes for students not easily described by a single term. It is important to consider the nature of how students interact with the world around them terms of behavior, learning styles, and use of technology. Students have indeed changed in the past two decades and adapting to those changes improves learning outcomes and student satisfaction. Regardless of the technology utilized, students still prefer Blended/Hybrid classes that employ a course website to compliment live class meetings. In a recent study of over 112,000 undergraduate students, a majority (57.7%) indicated that their preferred type of courses were those that had some online components. Only 22.1 % of these students preferred courses with no online components and a very small 7.8% preferred online only courses (Allen, 2013). In the same study, students reported lecture capture as their number one priority for faculty to use more of in the future. Students also report that having some control of the pace of learning can help them be more effective (Wibee, 2011). This study was designed to address the changing needs of students and their stated preferences related to their use of recorded lectures and online quizzes in hybrid STEM classes. This paper summarizes some initial qualitative results that are part of a broader and more quantitative study that is planned for the 2014-2015 school years. There is still some variation in the use and definition of term such as "blended" and "hybrid" in related research. To be clear, in this study the term “hybrid” is used to describe courses which have live, face-to-face meetings in a physical classroom each week and include a significant amount of additional materials as well as technical and procedural innovations available from the course website. This includes “flipping” the classroom in which lectures are recorded but students still attend live class for discussion of the material and other active learning activities. Students Use of Technology The debate over the nature of how students may or may not be learning differently continues. However, there is clear evidence that their use of technology continues to change. In a 2013 survey of student ownership of technology, laptops still occupied the top spot with over 89% of U.S. students reporting ownership (Allen, 2013). This number was 4% higher than 2012. Smartphones held the number 2 spot with 76% of student reporting ownership. Smartphone ownership, however, increased an impressive 15% between 2012 and 2013. Laptop and smartphone use by students significantly outpaces use in the general population. Student use of e-readers, desktop computers, and especially tablets all increased during the same period. However, students still use these devices less than the general population. Students are using more technology in all areas (laptops, smartphones, desktops, tables and ereaders). However, according to the same study, smartphones posted an impressive 20% gain in P ge 24341.3 importance to students while other devices remain the same or even dropped in value to students. While in-class use of smartphone's is not widespread (in fact many faculty discourage their use in class and some schools are experimenting with blocking WiFi access in lecture halls) more and more students report using smartphones to interact with the course website, take quizzes and listen to recorded lectures. Younger students reported using smartphones more than older students and used tablets less often, further accentuating the direction of the use of technology in the college level academic setting.