Assessing the Use of a Video to Teach the Laplace Expansion Theorem in Higher Education

Sidonie F Costa

doi:10.18178/ijiet.2022.12.3.1603

Abstract

The increasing use of learning videos in Higher Education (HE) have revolutionizing the traditional teaching environment. b-Mat@plicada is a b-Learning Mathematics course mainly composed of educational videos that the HE students of a Portuguese Institution can used for their study as a complement of the face-to-face lectures. In a previous research, an experiment was performed in the classroom context, where 49 HE students watched the b-Mat@plicada video on Matrix Multiplication as replacement of the traditional face-to-face explanation. Then, they were asked to solve individually an exercise, and respond to a survey assessing attitudes, perception, and satisfaction. In the present study, 63 HE students participated to a similar experiment with the b-Mat@plicada video on the Laplace Expansion Theorem, where a specific didactical approach is used. Beyond the comparison between the results of the two experiments, the findings of this study revealed that most students achieved the leaning objectives and appreciated the quality of the video in terms of image, sound, clarity and useless. The necessity of video contents in teaching was also expressed, mainly to clarify doubts and remember contents. However, all students considered that videos cannot replace traditional face-to-face classrooms, mainly due to the importance of the Teacher-Student dialogue.

Highlights

With the rapid growth of the Internet and the evolution of Smartphones, the video use in Higher Education (HE) has exponentially increased in the last decade
Concerning the usefulness of the videos for learning, 98% (n = 62) of students considered that the educational videos are useful and beneficial for their learning
Despite the helpfulness and the necessity of the learning videos referred by the students, all of them consider the videos as a good complement of the traditional face-to-face classes, not as a substitute, which is in accordance with other studies of the literature [50], [51]

Summary

Introduction

With the rapid growth of the Internet and the evolution of Smartphones, the video use in Higher Education (HE) has exponentially increased in the last decade. This trend has been accentuated during the year 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic, which provided new challenges for the educators who had to adjust their face-to-face lectures and implement online learning [1], [2]. The increasing use of video lectures in HE has resulted in the development of research studies in this area This technology has been viewed as a tool for enhancing teaching, and assessment [3]. The possibility of learning anytime, anywhere, and viewing material repetitively if necessary, is appreciated [9], [10]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion