Effect of supplementary videos on scientific reasoning in a general physics course

Abstract

This study investigated the impact of an instructional reform on student scientific reasoning skills and general attitudes toward science. The intervention was administered via eight 5-7 minute videos during lab. Each video consisted of an explanation of its targeted concept, a hands-on demo with observations and YouTube clips highlighting the topic being discussed. While viewing the videos, students were required to answer specific questions testing their comprehension of the concepts and the scientific reasoning being displayed. Lawson's Scientific Reasoning Test was administered to assess improvement in student scientific reasoning skills, and the CLASS was used to assess changes in student attitudes towards science. Pre and Post-test results are compared for a control semester and a semester with this new teaching method. Results show that this video intervention, which took students about two hours in total to complete, significantly improved students' science reasoning skills and their attitudes towards science.

Comparison of expert-like attitudes and scientific reasoning skills

“…The basic structure of the videos was as follows: an introduction to that week's topic; discussion of relevant variables that play a role in that physical system; a mathematical derivation and/or experimental demonstration that test these variables; a summary of the findings on how the variables discussed affect the physical system; a fun clip from YouTube that illustrated the weekly topic with higher production value video. These videos are described in detail in our previous work [24].…”