Lecture Videos in Online Courses: A Follow-Up

Abstract

In a recent study regarding online lecture videos, Evans (2014) shows that lecture videos are not superior to still slides. Using two Introduction to American Government courses, taught in a 4-week summer session, she shows that students in a non-video course had higher satisfaction with the course and instructor and performed better on exams than those in a course with lecture videos. In this follow-up study, we examine whether the same findings hold over a longer, more traditional semester with more students. Like Evans (2014), we find that in a longer semester, students in a non-video course reported higher satisfaction, but, unlike Evans (2014), students in the video section did better on exams. The implications of these findings for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are explored.

Keywords:

• distance learning
• online education
• political science
• video lectures

Notes

Individual Development and Educational Assessment (IDEA) evaluations are a nationally normed student course evaluation system. Currently, around 365 college and universities use the IDEA system for their course evaluations. Please see IDEA (1999) for more information.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Heather K. Evans

Heather K. Evans is an Associate Professor of political science at Sam Houston State University. Her research focuses on public opinion, political communication, and political engagement. She has also published research on teaching political science both in the classroom and online.

Victoria Cordova

Victoria Cordova was a political science graduate student at Sam Houston State University when this research was completed. She is currently the Assistant to the Executive Director & General Manager at Houston Public Media, Houston’s PBS, and NPR station.