Participation in Structures Classes via Student Made Videos

Opportunities for hands-on student participation in structures classes can be limited. Teaching labs are useful, but are limited in the ability to use non-traditional methods. In order to increase participation, students were asked to create their own videos like math or science teaching videos available online. The integration of technology in the classroom has been identified as technological pedagogical content knowledge. In this study, the students were allowed and encouraged to investigate the technology on their own to supplement in class education. The students were asked to create videos of strength of materials related content as review for structural design courses. The content was limited to solving truss problems, centroid and moment of inertia problems, which were presented in previous courses by other faculty. A survey of the students to assess their perceptions of their understanding of the content and video creation was performed. The importance and competence levels were self-assessed by the students through a survey instrument. A comparison of grades was utilized to determine if underperforming students increased performance. Using the course content from previous semesters allows the study to compare grades from the previous course to the current course to determine if using this technique increased overall grades.