Measuring Effects Of Mini-Lectures On Improving Student Engagement And Outcomes

In the current age, digital advancements have shaped the educational landscape by providing numerous possibilities for a fast and on-demand influx of information for students. This brings an additional difficulty for course designers in how to incorporate such technologies in teaching in an optimal way. Key examples are educational videos, which are especially relevant now due to the increase in accessibility of pre-made videos and recording technology since the pandemic. This puts post-pandemic teaching in the new but revolutionary position to complement in-person teaching with videos.

In this study, we examine the effect of videos combined with in-person teaching in a mathematics master course in motivation and grades. This experiment is specifically insightful due to our course consisting of three different topics (A,B,C). In Year 1 (control group), the course was taught traditionally. In Year 2 (experimental group), we provided additional video lectures on (A), while keeping (B) and (C) as before. We compare assessment and survey results between and within years.

Videos did not increase the students’ motivation for the topic (Fisher exact test 𝑝𝑝 = 0.06182). The intervention did not improve the midterm or final exam grades on (A) between years. Students who watched videos did not score significantly better on their assignments (2MWUt 𝑝𝑝 = 0.275) nor on their exams (2MWUt 𝑝𝑝 = 0.745) than students who did not watch the videos. However, a positive effect size was observed between years, while the intervention led to a negative effect size within the same year.