Improved Student Success in Online Video-Supported Face-to-Face Lectures

Traditionally, lectures can be divided into two main groups as far as content delivery is concerned. In face-to-face format, instructor delivers the content in the classroom in real time where students are expected to take notes to later refer to the course material when preparing for an exam. In the online format, the content is available as a lecture video and audio recording where the student can watch lectures on their own schedule. While face-to-face lectures have the advantage of enabling a more engaging atmosphere within the classroom, online lectures provide flexibility and archivability. Recently, flipped classrooms have gained in popularity by combining both methods to some extent and in different ways. However, the results reported in the literature so far in terms of student success are mixed. On the other hand, online lectures forego the traditional classroom time for media rich presentations of course material with inconclusive results. While there are other studies in the literature investigating the effects of video lectures on student understanding in traditional classrooms, they don’t use recordings of actual classroom lectures. In this work however, face-to-face and online delivery methods are combined in a much more literal way by supporting traditional lectures with online video recordings of the same lectures which significantly reduces the additional teaching load of the instructor. Students are expected to attend face-to-face classes which are recorded and made available to them after the class for easy reference before the exams or to help reinforce difficult to learn topics. To compare changes in student success this study has been done throughout four academic semesters spanning a period of Spring 2014 to Fall 2016 with the same instructor, on a junior level “signals and systems” course for electrical engineers. The control classes had only traditional face-to-face lectures whereas the modified classes had online video support. No other differences existed in terms of course material, grading schemes, assignments, etc. In the end, statistically significant differences are observed in student grades between control sections and those supported with online video recordings. It is the author’s opinion that repetition of course material in a way that doesn’t affect time-in-class helped improve student success with minimal effort on the instruction side.