Jay, Chuck, and I have long been proponents of using videos to supplement classroom teaching and on-line lectures. Our free learning package includes 46 company videos that we created to specifically match our text. We have also filmed about eighty 4-20 minute mini lectures, one for each Solved Problem in the book, that walk students through the steps to solve problems similar to the ones they will tackle for homework. In addition, we have added a dozen video interviews with recent grads who each talk about their OM careers and provide advice to future grads. Our upcoming 14th edition will include 10 Excel model-building videos.
So we were not surprised by a new research study (in Review of Educational Research) that concludes that supplementing existing content with videos can raise student scores. When students got videos in addition to their existing classes, the effect was strong– moving students from a B to an A.
Videos were found to be more effective for skills development, like our Solved Problem videos, than for knowledge transmission. On a skills assessment, they improved student scores by about five points out of 100. For learning knowledge, videos were about as good as existing teaching methods, increasing student scores by about two points. “Shifting the ‘explaining’ bits to videos allows the rich, interactive work to take up more of the precious face-to-face time with students” state the authors.
Videos might be more effective than face-to-face classes because students are able to engage at their own pace and in their own time. The results were robust across different teaching methods (such as lectures, tutorials, and homework) and types of video (such as case demonstrations and recorded lectures). The authors also believe that videos are effective for teaching skills development because videos often show situations more authentically than lectures can, by providing real-life demonstrations instead of artificial class presentations.
“Even after the pandemic ends, college instructors will find value in incorporating videos into their teaching,” says the report. “Ensuring that those videos are of high quality will provide significant long-term benefits.”