The impact of teaching with content-based math videos

Abstract

It has been well documented that most students enjoy watching videos, but the purpose of this action research (AR) project is to determine if the students are gathering information from the video and incorporating it into their knowledge. Students were asked to watch a video as well as perform the mathematical skill of finding equivalent values before and after watching a video. This AR also sought to assess if teaching metacognitive skills can influence student learning during the video lesson. The same treatment was performed with a video lesson with a teacher modeling metacognitive skills through a think-aloud lesson plan. Thus the AR project was a conglomeration of investigations into video-based lessons that examined the effects of teaching methods during lessons containing a video on student's math ability. The first research question was framed in such a way to capture data about the relationship between student's ability and the impact of videos on their math ability. The second question is aimed at the teacher and the teaching technique when the teacher shows a video in class. The literature review led me to the third question and steered the instruction to a cognitive strategy based lesson. This question asked if teaching using a think-aloud method shows more growth than showing the video without explanation. The data showed that there was only a slight improvement in the math ability after watching a content-based video lecture straight through without interruption. When a content-based video was stopped and discussed using a think-aloud lesson plan the students' ability improved only slightly better. Interestingly, the largest improvement was recorded between trials when no instruction or videos were shown about the content being tested. This seems to indicate that videos are not a convincing method of instruction even when coupled with a teaching strategy.