Online YouTube Lectures: The World of Lectures 2.0 Ron J Hugo Schulich School of Engineering University of Calgary, Canada

Objective:

The modern day university was born out of a collective of charismatic scholars who were able to entertain, enthral, educate, and attract students from across Europe to cities such as Bologna, Oxford, and Paris (Hofstadter and Metzger, 1955). Although the masters often travelled to other Studia Generale across Europe to share documents and learnings, the invention of the printing press in 1450 made it possible for the learnings of one master to be delivered by another, potentially less-skilled master, at another Studium Generale.

Presently, another evolution, and some would even say revolution, is taking place. It is now relatively simple for anybody to develop, record, and broadcast a lecture through media sites that have global reach (Khan, 2012). With this development, the lecture has become fully liberated. In certain respects, a reversal is now underway whereby the master, or professor if using the modern-day equivalent, can now be available to students irrespective of student location. This evolution and its ability to transform our view of the modern-day university (Bowen, 2013) is explored in this work.

Approach:

In the Fall of 2013, an experiment was conducted whereby a third-year (junior level) Mechanical Engineering course was offered in a blended format using YouTube for the online content delivery. Although the content was developed and delivered specifically for the 92 students registered in the University of Calgary (UCalgary) course, it was also possible for students not registered in the course to watch the content.

In this blended format, face-to-face interaction was reduced by 66% and was reserved for a once-a- week active tutorial involving concept questions that related to the weekly assignments. Both electronic personal response systems and Mazur’s peer instruction technique (Mazur, 1997) were applied to the active tutorials.

Engagement:

An interpretation of student viewing habits was obtained by examining how Canadian (assumed to be UCalgary course registrants) and American (US) watch minutes related to the weekly cycles in a student’s life, as shown on the left in Fig. 1. It is interesting to note that Canadian watch minutes are often lower on Fridays, denoted by vertical dashed lines in Fig. 1, indicating that UCalgary students tend to do less school work on Fridays than they do on other days of the week. This trend is less pronounced for students in the US, possibly due to the fact that the watch minutes in the US are dispersed geographically, that is, not pertaining to a specific group, course or university. The lower viewing correlation also reflects differing course deadlines. Figure 1 (right) shows a plot of Canadian watch minutes, with the dashed vertical lines denoting assignments and exams. Given that watch minutes drop quickly to near zero after the final exam, it can be surmised that primarily UCalgary course registrants were watching in Canada.

1 Canada Assignments Term Exams Final Exam United States

2000 2000

1000 1000

WatchMinutes

Canada(WatchMinutes)

0 0 01/09/2013 29/09/2013 27/10/2013 24/11/2013 22/12/2013 01/09/2013 29/09/2013 27/10/2013 24/11/2013 22/12/2013 Date Date

Figure 1. Watch Minutes: Canada / US Weekly (left); Canada by Course Milestone (right)

Results:

Further detail on student viewing habits can be obtained from the contour plot in Fig. 2, showing Canadian cumulative watch minutes by lecture video segment and by day. Also indicated on this plot are the major course topics, dates of major exams, and video segments with example problems. The data indicates that student watch minutes tend to decrease as the semester progresses, as indicated by comparing cumulative watch minutes for the HVAC topic to the Gas Power Cycles topic, for example. It seems as though the students begin to lose stamina starting at about Day 60 (51 days into the term given that the course begins on Day 9). It is also noted that students take a reprieve from watching lectures when term exams take place. Finally, they appear to prepare for the final exam by watching content across the entire course (all Lecture Video Segments) versus only watching content for the last two topics (HVAC and Combustion).

2 Final Exam 1 Exam 2 Exam Example 0.000 140 Example 86.00 Combustion 172.0 Example 258.0 344.0 120 HVAC Example 430.0 Example Gas Mixtures 516.0 Example 602.0 100 Refrigeration Example 688.0

Example 774.0 860.0 Vapor Power Cycles 80 946.0 Example 1032 1118 Gas Power Cycles 1204 60 1290 Example

Exergy Example 40 Example LectureVideo Segment Review

20 Example Example

Course 20 40 60 80 100 120 Begins Number of Days Starting Sept 1 2013

Figure 2. Cumulative Canadian Watch Minutes by Lecture Segment and Day

By examining student performance between traditional lecture-based delivery (2001-2005) and the blended delivery from 2013 (all taught and assessed by the same course instructor), Fig. 3 reveals no significant difference in student performance on the final exam. Student feedback, as quantified by the UCalgary Universal Student Ratings of Instruction (USRI) instrument, rated overall instruction for the blended delivery course in the upper 60th percentile of all third-year courses taught in Engineering during Fall 2013, despite the 66% reduction in face-to-face contact time.

2013 40 '01 - '05

35 2013: N=89, x=70.1%, =16.0% '01-'05: N=531, x=69.2%, =16.5% 30

25

20

15

PercentageStudentsof 10

5

0 20 40 60 80 100 Exam Score

Figure 3. Final Exam Performance – 2013 versus 2001-2005

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Impact:

During the 17 months since the course was first uploaded to YouTube, the lectures have been viewed by individuals in over 160 countries. The geographic distribution of these viewers is compared to edX course enrollees in Fig. 4, reflecting a somewhat similar global distribution. Using Fall 2013 Canadian watch minutes and the number of students enrolled during that semester, it is possible to compute the number of minutes viewed per student per course offering. In the 17 months since the material was first uploaded to YouTube, the equivalent of over 1000 students have watched what equates to one full course.

Figure 4. Geographic Distribution of Consumers

This work demonstrates that students can learn as effectively with a blended delivery format as they do with a live lecture format. As the technology for online delivery improves, the overall student experience will continue to improve, and this will eventually challenge even the most gifted of live lecturers.

The global reach of YouTube-based lectures achieves what the printing press once achieved, only now with a shift. With the printing press, it was possible for less-skilled masters to deliver the content of the original masters to students at geographically distributed Studia Generale. In this new evolution to Lecture 2.0, students are now able to select the masters from which they want to learn.

References:

Bowen, W.G. (2013). Higher Education in the Digital Age, Princeton University Press.

Hofstadter, R. and Metzger, W. (1955). The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States, Columbia University Press.

Khan, S. (2012). The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined, Twelve.

4 Mazur, E. (1997). Peer Instruction, A User’s Manual, Prentice Hall.

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