Work in Progress: Development, Implementation, and Student Perceptions of Pre-Class Thermodynamics Videos

Michael David Mau Barankin; Justin Franklin Shaffer; Logan Riley Nimer

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Conference: 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Tampa, Florida
Publication Date: June 15, 2019
Start Date: June 15, 2019
End Date: June 19, 2019
Conference Session: Work-In-Progress Postcard Session
Tagged Division: Chemical Engineering
Page Count: 12
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--33606
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/33606
Download Count: 582

Paper Authors

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Michael David Mau Barankin Colorado School of Mines

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Michael D. M. Barankin is a Teaching Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. Dr. Barankin received his B.S. and Ph.D. from the University of CA, Los Angeles in 2002 and 2009, respectively; and he received his M.S., graduating with honors, from the Technical University in Delft, the Netherlands (TU Delft) in 2004. After a post-doctoral appointment at TU Delft through 2011, Dr. Barankin was a lecturer at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen, where he taught both in Dutch and in English. During this time his primary teaching and course development responsibilities were wide-ranging, but included running the Unit Operations laboratory, introducing Aspen Plus software to the curriculum, and developing a course for a new M.S. program on Renewable Energy (EUREC). In conjunction with his teaching appointment, he supervised dozens of internships (a part of the curriculum at the Hanze), and a number of undergraduate research projects with the Energy Knowledge Center (EKC) as well as a master’s thesis. In 2016, Dr. Barankin returned to the US to teach at the Colorado School of Mines. His primary teaching and course development responsibilities here include the Unit Operations Lab and Senior Design (including Aspen), among other undergraduate core courses. His research interests include digital & online methods in engineering education.

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Justin Franklin Shaffer Colorado School of Mines

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Logan Riley Nimer

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Abstract

Flipping course lectures using online videos has demonstrated mixed results in various contexts (e.g., in different courses, with or without post-assessments, in tandem with reading guides). This work will describe the initial results of flipping the content lectures (ca. 15 in total) in an Introduction to Thermodynamics course, with mostly first and second year Chemical Engineering undergraduates. The videos were produced by re-apportioning and recording the PowerPoint lectures (developed in the previous year) which covered theoretical concepts and principles only—PowerPoints which covered example problems were reserved for class time. The video lectures were scripted and then recorded at the maximum (talking) speed at which the instructor was comfortable, thereby ensuring that a majority of the videos are less than 10 minutes in duration, and none are longer than 15 minutes. Videos took approximately 2-3 hours to produce, including scripting, recording, and editing (plus roughly one hour to compile and upload to the LMS). Student learning is encouraged using short, ungraded online quizzes (available for most of the videos) for which they receive participation points. In addition to the videos, students are provided regular reading guides and reading quizzes (developed by the instructor of a separate section of this course). Students are anonymously surveyed via the LMS at the end of the course as to their use of the videos (self-reporting is compared to LMS access data), their opinion of the format of the videos (length, speed, quality), and their opinion of the content and usefulness of the videos, in addition to open comments. Student performance (as measured by exam and final grades) is compared against students’ self-reported use of the videos by means of swarm plots, revealing correlations between performance and video use. In addition, quantitative results and frequent comments from the video survey (and those made about the videos during mid-term and final course evaluation surveys) will be included in the analysis. Initial results (from early submissions to the mid-term evaluation survey) suggest the videos are highly appreciated by and useful to the students, but too fast and perhaps too long for some students. Although it is too early to tell with certainty, the introduction of these videos does not appear to have had a strongly negative effect on student performance. Nevertheless, the material presented in the videos (roughly two hours in total) is done in a far more time-efficient manner (sparing roughly seven hours of in-class time over the entire semester). While the initial time investment is significant (ca. 2-3 hours for every hour lecture, presented in 10-15 min), the same videos may be re-used as-is, or with minor modifications, in future years. This affords the instructor more flexibility to introduce (potentially time-consuming) active learning techniques during class time, and to experiment with other didactic interventions.

Citation
Format

Barankin, M. D. M., & Shaffer, J. F., & Nimer, L. R. (2019, June), Work in Progress: Development, Implementation, and Student Perceptions of Pre-Class Thermodynamics Videos Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--33606

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Flipping course lectures using online videos has demonstrated mixed results in various contexts (e.g., in different courses, with or without post-assessments, in tandem with reading guides).  This work will describe the initial results of flipping the content lectures (ca. 15 in total) in an Introduction to Thermodynamics course, with mostly first and second year Chemical Engineering undergraduates.
The videos were produced by re-apportioning and recording the PowerPoint lectures (developed in the previous year) which covered theoretical concepts and principles only—PowerPoints which covered example problems were reserved for class time.  The video lectures were scripted and then recorded at the maximum (talking) speed at which the instructor was comfortable, thereby ensuring that a majority of the videos are less than 10 minutes in duration, and none are longer than 15 minutes.  Videos took approximately 2-3 hours to produce, including scripting, recording, and editing (plus roughly one hour to compile and upload to the LMS).  Student learning is encouraged using short, ungraded online quizzes (available for most of the videos) for which they receive participation points.  In addition to the videos, students are provided regular reading guides and reading quizzes (developed by the instructor of a separate section of this course).
Students are anonymously surveyed via the LMS at the end of the course as to their use of the videos (self-reporting is compared to LMS access data), their opinion of the format of the videos (length, speed, quality), and their opinion of the content and usefulness of the videos, in addition to open comments.  Student performance (as measured by exam and final grades) is compared against students’ self-reported use of the videos by means of swarm plots, revealing correlations between performance and video use.  In addition, quantitative results and frequent comments from the video survey (and those made about the videos during mid-term and final course evaluation surveys) will be included in the analysis.
Initial results (from early submissions to the mid-term evaluation survey) suggest the videos are highly appreciated by and useful to the students, but too fast and perhaps too long for some students.  Although it is too early to tell with certainty, the introduction of these videos does not appear to have had a strongly negative effect on student performance.  Nevertheless, the material presented in the videos (roughly two hours in total) is done in a far more time-efficient manner (sparing roughly seven hours of in-class time over the entire semester).  While the initial time investment is significant (ca. 2-3 hours for every hour lecture, presented in 10-15 min), the same videos may be re-used as-is, or with minor modifications, in future years.  This affords the instructor more flexibility to introduce (potentially time-consuming) active learning techniques during class time, and to experiment with other didactic interventions.
AU  - Michael David Mau Barankin
AU  - Justin Franklin Shaffer
AU  - Logan Riley Nimer
CY  - Tampa, Florida
DA  - 2019/06/15
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Work in Progress: Development, Implementation, and Student Perceptions of Pre-Class Thermodynamics Videos
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/33606
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--33606
ER  -