Abstract
Abstract: The current study sought to determine the effectiveness of video-on-demand podcasts (vodcasts) as a tool for facilitating the understanding of Physiology by first year undergraduate Graduate Entry to Medicine (GEM) students. 73 first year undergraduate GEM students were provided with full length vodcasts of lecture material in advance of each of 9 Physiology lectures. Exam performance, using identical sample questions, was assessed against performance of the 2012-2013 GEM I class, which did not have access to the vodcasts. Qualitative information of students’ perceptions of the vodcasts was also gathered and analysed. Analysis revealed that the study group of 2013-2014 GEM I students achieved significantly higher grades in various examination formats in comparison to the control 2012-2013 GEM I cohort. Qualitative analysis of responses to the attitudinal survey revealed that the majority of students liked the vodcasts and that previewing them before lectures did indeed facilitate understanding of the lecture material. However, only 15% of the class were able to view all 9 of the prepared vodcasts prior to lectures. Notably, the majority of students indicated that they also considered the vodcasts to be valuable revision tools. This study is the first to show that the use of vodcasts can provide clear, quantifiable benefits for medical student learning over and above lecture notes and/or lecture slides alone. Our analysis suggests that this improvement was due both to their use as a preview tool as well as facility for later revision of lecture content.
Highlights
The current era of rapid technological advancement has had multiple significant and direct impacts on education in terms of both teaching and learning
Vodcast viewing statistics As the central goal of the study was to determine if viewing vodcasts in advance of the faceto-face lectures had any significant effect on overall class exam performance, option 4 of the survey asked ‘Of the nine that have been made, how many of the GM1001 Physiology vodcasts did you view/listen to prior to attending the relevant lecture?’, with the responses shown in figure 6
This conclusion is supported by the fact that the performance of the 13-14 year group against 21 questions in the continuous assessment (CA) and 9 in the EOY exam relating to material delivered by the one other Physiology lecturer on the same module was not significantly improved relative to that of the 12-13 group, a finding which one would not have expected if the improved test performance of the 13-14 graduate entry medical (GEM) was due to a general improvement in this class’s ability relative to the 12-13 year
Summary
The current era of rapid technological advancement has had multiple significant and direct impacts on education in terms of both teaching and learning. One of the most significant advances in this regard has been the growth in the use of digital media such as podcasts as an alternative, or adjunct, to the traditional lecture (Ravenscroft, Tait, & Hughes, 1998; Stephenson, Brown, & Griffin, 2008), a development which is broadly very popular with students (Evans, Gibbons, Shah, & Griffin, 2004; Heilesen, 2010). The use of digital media such as podcasts seems to have a positive and measurable impact upon learning and teaching when used as an adjunct to the traditional didactic lecture (see inter alia Evans, 2008; Fernandez, Simo, & Sallan, 2009; Heilesen, 2010; Lazzari, 2009; Lin, Zimmer, & Lee, 2013; McGarr, 2009; Morris, 2010). The primary reason for their popularity with students was that they felt that they helped to improve their learning (for review see Kay, 2012)
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