A Preliminary Investigation into the Use of Audience Video Recordings to Assess Student Engagement During Large Lecture Classes

This paper was presented at the Fall 2017 ASEE Mid-Atlantic Conference at Penn State, Berks.

Abstract:

Twenty-first century higher education is moving from a faculty-centered teaching model to student-centered learning. With this change the question has become are the students learning? This study presents a method for direct, authentic, and formative assessment of the student engagement level during various lecture techniques in large classes. The basis for this study is that student engagement leads to student learning. Video recordings of a 208-student capstone lecture audience were assessed for five different lectures using an ordinal scale. Three different pedagogies were explored: traditional lecture, active-collaborative learning (ACL), and random calling to see if they have an effect on the average level of engagement during lecture. It was shown across 59 data points that ACLs lead to a significant increase in engagement while there is no meaningful difference between traditional lecture and random calling especially when compared to ACLs.

The paper is available via open access here: ACL Paper Download

The slides from my talk are available here: ASEE Presentation Slides

Recording of a seminar I delivered to the Lehigh University Graduate Student Teacher Development Workshop where I discuss the findings from this paper