Abstract:

Teaching in higher education in the form of conventional lectures have dominated higher education environments for over 600 years; however, educators and students are now questioning this method for continued facilitation. Traditional lectures result in inadequate dissemination of complex content, lack of student attention and participation, and decreased student attendance. A significant body of research highlighting the limitations on conventional lecture based teaching styles has been identified, yet calls for change in higher education instruction have been met with perplexing difficulty and resistance, especially change in pedagogical techniques in undergraduate biology courses. Shift for new teaching practices to foster the net generation population are lacking as technologically literate student learners are faced with conventional learning expectations to that of digital literacy and interactivity. However, the use of dynamic media in multimedia course design has been found to have positive impacts not only on student learning, but also on aspects of cognitive load, particularly with concepts of higher complexity. Further, the use of “fly-over videos” versus conventional lecturing may reduce student's cognitive and reverse science misconceptions. This study aims to investigate the efficacy of non-traditional, progressive pedagogical techniques such as videos, digital science visualizations, multimedia animation, audio-visual learning, and clicker use in higher education science instruction. Student opinion data was collected anonymously from two sections of the course (N=174) which consisted of 10 in-class iClicker survey questions. Several statistical measures were conducted using STATA including Cronbach’s alpha to determine the scale reliability, correlation matrix, descriptive statistics, one-sample t-test, and Skewness/Kurtosis tests for Normality to ascertain any statistical significance on student responses based on the use of “Fly-over” videos. We hypothesize that the use of progressive techniques, like cognitive multimedia learning in science, will improve student performance outcomes and reverse common misconceptions on evolution and ecology.

Keywords:

Multimedia learning, fly-over videos, science visualizations, animations, video learning, cognitive loads, traditional vs. non-traditional lecture.