Watch it or Read it: Understanding Undergraduate Engineering Students' Learning Effectiveness and Preference for Video Tutorials Versus Guide-on-the-Side Tutorials

Qianjin Zhang; Kari A Kozak

doi:10.18260/1-2--29111

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Watch it or Read it: Understanding Undergraduate Engineering Students' Learning Effectiveness and Preference for Video Tutorials Versus Guide-on-the-Side Tutorials

Conference paper

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Watch it or Read it: Understanding Undergraduate Engineering Students' Learning Effectiveness and Preference for Video Tutorials Versus Guide-on-the-Side Tutorials

Qianjin Zhang and Kari A Kozak

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

06/24/2017

DOI: 10.18260/1-2--29111

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Abstract

Video tutorials and text-and-image tutorials are widely used for teaching database searching skills in many academic libraries. The purpose for this study is to discover undergraduate engineering students’ performance and preference for video tutorials versus text-and-image tutorials (called Guide-on-the-Side) for Compendex database instruction. We designed three tasks: emailing citations, finding a controlled term and performing a search using wildcards/stemming, and both a video tutorial and a Guide-on-the-Side tutorial with the same information to help solve each task. We counterbalanced each combination of tutorial format and task so that each combination was presented to the participant pool with an equal chance. Students’ performance was measured by time spent on each task and correctness. Both video tutorials and Guide-on-the-Side tutorials were assessed by ease of understanding concepts presented in different formats, overall satisfaction with tutorials, ease of completing tasks and preference for which tutorial format. Results from this study suggested that both video tutorials and Guide-on-the-Side tutorials effectively helped the undergraduate students learn database searching. There was no strong evidence to show any differences between the two tutorial formats in terms of the ease of understanding concepts, the length and overall satisfaction. Participants preferred Guide-on-the-Side tutorials (58%) over video tutorials (32%).

Details

Title: Subtitle: Watch it or Read it: Understanding Undergraduate Engineering Students' Learning Effectiveness and Preference for Video Tutorials Versus Guide-on-the-Side Tutorials
Creators: Qianjin Zhang - University of Iowa, Branch Libraries
Kari A Kozak - University of Iowa, Branch Libraries
Resource Type: Conference paper
Conference: 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--29111
Language: English
Date presented: 06/24/2017
Academic Unit: Engineering Administration; Branch Libraries
Record Identifier: 9984131579902771

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