A study of the effect of instructional media in an undergraduate electrical circuits course

Abstract

In various studies, it has been demonstrated that instructional media plays an important role in instructors' teaching and students' learning. The purpose of this study is to assess the students' preferences for different instructional media and the impact of different instructional media on the students' learning and course-related behavior in an undergraduate electrical circuit's course. The instructional media under study were: Computer-based PowerPoint presentation, whiteboard only, combination of PowerPoint and whiteboard and combination of printed handouts and whiteboard. Two schools participated in this study: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (RHIT), Terre Haute, IN and Qingdao University, Qingdao, P. R. China. At RHIT, two midterm exams and one final exam were used to assess the learning effectiveness of different instructional media. To understand the course related behavior, each of the instructors were asked to assess their students' behavior in terms of attendance, amount of classroom interaction, percent of homework completion and web logins. At the end of the quarter, a questionnaire was collected from participating students to measure their preference for the instructional media. The same questionnaire was given to the students at Qingdao University to study their preference for different instructional media.