2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The flipped class, wherein students typically encounter new content outside the classroom with an opportunity to explore it deeper in the classroom, is becoming an increasingly popular format of teaching in engineering. Since the flipped class typically results in increased availability of instructor created/curated resources for use outside the class and provides greater opportunity for receiving tailored assistance in the class, one would expect students to perform far better when classes are flipped. However, studies have shown that students generally do not perform much better (if at all) in flipped classes, but that students appreciate the increased resources available to them. Although the resources and help exist, it is possible that students simply do not know the best way to incorporate them into their studies.

With the eventual aim of helping students better interact with the new resources available to them (pre-class lecture videos in this case), this study aims to understand their current viewing behavior by analyzing video viewing data collected from multiple sections of a sophomore-level engineering statics course.

The dataset consisting of 69 students viewing 89 pre-class videos assigned thrice a week over 17 weeks indicates that, on an average, approximately three quarters of videos were viewed to any extent before class, and when viewed, videos were viewed to approximately three quarters of their duration before class. Coverage of each video as well as number of full viewings dropped over the semester, longer videos were watched to a lesser extent than shorter videos, and day of the week had a significant effect on viewing metrics. Video viewing was unaffected by gender and pre-class GPA, and there was no correlation between video viewing metrics and course performance. Hypotheses for differences between the above and previously published trends are discussed with suggestions for improving engagement in pre-class videos.