Flipping the Script: Using Short Videos to Promote Learning in Introductory Geoscience Courses

North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC

Investigators

Abstract

The project is developing a series of short videos for self-paced, pre-class viewing in large introductory geoscience courses and testing their impact on student learning and metacognitive judgments, including the assessment of patterns of use and video characteristics that best promote learning. The videos, which focus upon geoscience-literacy concepts, are also being tested as a component of a "flipped-classroom" approach, in which some content delivery is shifted to video format, and class meetings involve greater participation in active-learning strategies. Videos and related resources to support use and assessment are being shared with the broader geoscience community by posting to the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) website and to YouTube. The intellectual merit of this project lies in its comprehensive and timely approach, well-grounded in the literature, to developing and assessing both video resources and their use in flipped classrooms. Broader impacts include the wide availability of the videos themselves, as well as the potential for associated insights from the educational research to shift pedagogical practices in introductory geoscience courses.