The impact of video clips on teaching in technical study programs — learning faster or learning desaster? An approach from the perspective of a "manufacturing technology" module

Abstract

Video-sharing websites like YouTube are very popular, their usage can particularly be seen by younger people, the so called "Digital Natives". For example, about a billion of people visits YouTube every month and about a billion of hours is spent daily to watch videos there. In principle this enthusiasm for videos offers the opportunity to use them as a didactical tool. But even though the medium is available since decades, the usage of videos in didactics is still an expandable field and scientific publications are drawing a very complex scheme on this topic. Quantitative findings of the effect in teaching are very rare. Therefore, a team at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences carried out a project to analyze the situation and define strategies for the own needs focusing on the engineering subject of study "manufacturing technology". Based on literature and own considerations, a questionnaire was designed asking for preferences in learning media comparing chalkboard, power point and video based lectures. In parallel around 900 written examinations were analyzed over a period of 7 years. The analysis compared examination results on topics taught by video clips to results on topics taught in power point and chalkboard lectures. The concrete results did not show a significant advantage by video teaching, but gave interesting hints for follow-up projects. Regarding the different didactic tools, a clear preference could be found for video based lectures. Notable was that female students tended slightly to the chalkboard lectures.