A Curriculum-spanning Review Video Library to Improve Retention of Prerequisite Course Material

A weak foundation of prerequisite material can lead to poor understanding of new material and possible failure in subsequent courses. Often, students do not spend an adequate amount of time reviewing prerequisite material outside of class. In response, instructors often spend time reviewing prerequisite material during class at the expense of new topics. To address these issues, a Review Video Library (or RVL) has been created and additional videos are being added over time. The topics of the videos currently focus on prerequisite mathematics for upper-level engineering courses. While videos have long been used to teach new material and review previous material for individual courses, the present videos will eventually span the entire mechanical engineering curriculum, creating a unified structure that can be implemented by instructors at all levels. This paper presents a detailed assessment of the first two semesters in which the RVL has been implemented. Notably, one instructor was able to decrease the class time spent reviewing prerequisite course material by one entire 75-minute lecture during the first 5 weeks of the semester. At the same time, direct comparison of quiz grades across multiple semesters demonstrated significantly higher performance after the implementation of the RVL. Additionally, student surveys revealed that 100% of undergraduates who watched a video felt that watching the videos improved their understanding of that topic. Lessons learned during the process and ideas for future work are also presented.