Pre- and Post-Class Student Viewing Behaviors for Recorded Videos in an Inverted Sophomore Mechanics Course

The inverted classroom has gained significant traction in higher education over the past several years. While inversion can take on many specific forms, it usually implies some shift of theoretical lecture content away from the in-class time and into the student time spent outside the classroom. Students are expected to watch recorded video lectures before coming to class and then the time in the classroom is spent with students working on problems in some form. This active learning strategy allows the focus of faculty-student interactions in class to be on the application and higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy that are usually targeted in engineering and similar technical courses. While these pre-recorded lecture videos are an essential component of an inverted course structure, little data has been made available on how students actually watch these recorded videos. This paper presents the results of a study of student viewing behaviors for pre-recorded video content in an inverted introductory sophomore mechanics course. Data is presented for both theory-based lectures intended to be viewed prior to class, and for recorded example problem solution videos that review problems solved during class meetings. Data from the video distribution system was used to answer a series of research questions related to student viewing behaviors. The observations presented in this paper indicate that on average, students watched a little more than half of the recorded lecture content that they were expected to. Viewing rates steadily decreased throughout the semester, but were not affected by video length or day of week. Female students were found to exhibit significantly higher viewing rates than their male counterparts. Effectively, no correlation was observed between viewership rates and course performance as measured by final course grades. Introduction/Course Structure In the College of Engineering at Villanova University, several courses have been transitioned to an inverted format over the past four years. In the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering alone, the entire five course sequence in mechanics and structures is now offered in this format as indicated in Table 1. In all five of these courses, students are required to watch theory-based lecture videos that are designed with the primary intent of preparing students for solving problems in class. While the format and delivery of the lecture videos is similar, the strategies for encouraging, ensuring, and rewarding students for watching videos vary among the individual courses. Some courses give credit for viewing videos, and some courses use short quizzes based on the lecture video content. The course that is the subject of the study in this paper, Mechanics I, does not give any credit toward the final course grade for watching videos, nor does it rely on quizzes related to the video content. Table 1 – Mechanics and structures sequence in CEE at Villanova University Course Credit Hours Semester First Inverted Offering Mechanics I 4 Sophomore Fall Fall 2013 Mechanics II 4 Sophomore Spring Spring 2015 Structural Analysis 3 Junior Fall Fall 2015 Structural Steel Design 3 Junior Spring Spring 2014 # Reinforced Concrete Design 3 Senior Fall Fall 2014 # # Prior to 2014, Structural Steel Design and Reinforced Concrete Design were offered in a single combined course. This course, Structural Design, was first offered in the inverted format in Spring 2012. Mechanics I is an introductory mechanics course that covers traditional concepts of Statics and Mechanics of Solids with emphasis on axial loading. Basic material properties such as strength and stiffness of linear elastic materials such as steel are also addressed. Mechanics I is offered every fall semester and is typically taken by first-semester sophomore students. The four-credit course meets three times per week for 50 minutes (on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) and once per week for a 165-minute flex period (on Thursday). The course is co-taught by a pair of faculty members (the authors of this paper) and is always scheduled with two sections of 20 to 30 students each. The same instructors co-teach both sections and the second section always meets immediately after the first section, so the two sections are effectively considered identical. The first section meets at 8:30 AM on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and at 11:30 AM on Thursday. The second section meets at 9:30 AM and 2:30 PM on these days respectively. Mechanics I was first offered in Fall 2009 and was first presented in an inverted format in Fall 2013. The content did not change when the inverted format was implemented, but the course structure did. Prior to all but five class meetings, a link to a theory-based video lecture recording is posted on the online course management system (Blackboard). Students are expected to watch the video prior to attending class. During each class meeting, the instructor leads students in a real-time manner through two or three example problems. Students transcribe the solutions to the problems, and the instructor uses these problems to reinforce important theoretical concepts from the video lectures. The instructors believe that the real-time nature of the problem solving (as opposed to simply providing a pre-solved problem with a solution worked out ahead of time) and the extra time permitted by shifting the theory to a pre-class video lecture, allow for better learning at the application level in the classroom. In many cases, particularly in the second or third example problem for a particular class meeting, students are asked to solve parts of the problems independently and then compare their answers to the instructor solution. If any time remains after the example problems are worked through, students are asked to start their assigned homework problems and encouraged to ask the instructor for assistance as needed. Students are not required to purchase a textbook for the course, and instead students purchase a pre-printed course binder that includes all lecture notes associated with the videos, and all example and homework problems that will be solved during the semester. The decision to not require a textbook was made based on student feedback from the first few years of the course (prior to inversion). Since all of the problems solved in class and assigned for homework were created by the instructors, students felt that they used the text very little and that it was not essential to have a textbook to be successful in the course. Student feedback from the inverted version of the course confirms that students still do not feel that a required textbook is warranted. For the first three years of the inverted version of this course (including 2015, from which the data for this paper is based), the instructors decided not to award students any formal credit toward the course grade for watching the lecture videos before class. Furthermore, quizzes based on the lecture theory have not been implemented. Instead, the instructors continually reiterate the importance of the lectures in preparing students for learning during class meetings and state the expectation that students are watching the lectures. The instructors elected not to provide any formal credit for watching lectures in large part to stay consistent with the historical approach of having student assessment in the course focused on application (i.e. solving problems correctly). Video recordings are also used to provide an opportunity for students to enhance their learning after class meetings. The theory-based lecture videos that students are expected to watch before class are available after class for students who wish to review this content further. Additionally, the instructors have recorded video solutions to all example problems solved in class. These problem solution videos are made available immediately after each class period so that students can review them for clarification while working through similar homework problems or studying for exams.