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Higher Education 14 (1985) 165-173 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., Amsterdam Printed in The Netherlands

COLLEGE STUDENT LEARNING FROM TELEVISED VERSUS CONVENTIONAL CLASSROOM LECTURES: A CONTROLLED

EXPERIMENT

LEE ELLIS and DAN M A T H I S

Minot State College, Minot, North Dakota 58701, U.S.A.

A B S T R A C T

In a controlled experiment, students in two sections of introductory sociology were exposed either to conventional classroom lectures or to the same lectures broadcast live in an adjacent room on a television monitor. Except for the first round of six lectures, when technical problems appeared to have lowered test performance by the experimental groups, learning under the two lecturing modes was statistically equivalent. Self-reported class attendance, also, seemed to have been unaffected by lecturing modes. This study confirms the general pattern of results from a number of prior, albeit less rigorously designed, studies of live vs. televised lecture courses.

Introduction

At least eleven studies have compared student learning in introductory level college courses taught via television with the same courses taught by live lectures. Overall, these studies have concluded that student learning is virtually equivalent for these two lecturing modes. Relevant findings are summarized in Table I.

Despite the overall consistency of the results, certain methodological short- comings have been endemic in virtually all of these studies, and have served to cast the conclusion that the two lecture modes are essentially identical into some doubt. For example, none of the studies involved random assignment of students to the two lecturing modes. By and large, students themselves chose the course sections they would take, often presumably with fore-knowledge that one of them would be "a TV course." Also, in most of the studies, the televised lectures were "studio lectures," usually involving somewhat different presenta- tion styles and the use of more elaborate visual aids than typical classroom lectures.

0018-1560/85/$ 03.30 �9 1985 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.

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TABLE I

Results of Studies Compar ing Student Performance in Courses Taught Both Live and via Television

Study Subject area Main finding

Alexander, 1962 Mathematics

Bailey, 1959 Physics

Berger, 1962 Mathematics

Bickel, 1965 Mathematics

Buckler, 1958 English

Davies et al., 1958

Dyer-Bennet et al., 1958

Sociology

Mathematics

Janes, 1961 Sociology

Lofthouse, 1957 Education

Spencer, 1963 English

Thorman & Amb, 1974 (also Thorman, 1975)

Psychology

No significant difference in overall test scores between live lecture and TV lecture groups No significant difference in overall test scores between live lecture and TV lecture groups; but TV group gave lower overall evaluations of the course No significant difference in overall test scores between live lecture and TV lecture groups No significant difference in overall test scores between live lecture and TV lecture groups No significant difference in overall test scores between live lecture and TV lecture groups; but among students with high aptitudes, somewhat better test scores were obtained in the live lecture section No significant difference in overall test scores between live lecture and TV lecture groups No significant difference on 4 of 6 tests; however, live lecture students did significantly better than TV lecture group on 2 tests Slightly, but significantly, better test scores by students in the live lecture group than in the TV lecture group No significant difference in overall test scores between live lecture and TV lecture groups No significant difference in overall test scores between live lecture and TV lecture groups; however, TV group gave lower overall evaluations of the course No significant difference in overall test scores between live lecture and TV lecture groups

The present experiment was designed to circumvent the above methodolog- ical shortcomings, and thereby specifically determine whether or not student learning is equivalent for conventional classroom lecturing, compared to exactly the same lectures presented on television.

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Method

Subjects (Ss) in the study were 117 students taking two introductory sociology courses in the fall of 1983 at Minot State College. The courses were taught by the senior author, "back-to-back," four days a week in the morning. They will be identified in this report as the 9:00 class and the 10:00 class. Nearly all of the students in both classes were freshman and sophomores, with less than 10 percent juniors and seniors.

Students were informed about the nature of the experiment on the second day of class and that their reward for agreeing to participate would be one additional point on their final grade. Nevertheless, they were warned that after they had agreed to take part in the experiment, they could not withdraw once their group assignment had been randomly determined. One student declined to participate in the experiment. All other students were randomly assigned to one of two groups in each of the two classes. The random assignment was made using an alphabetized class roster that was sequentially numbered. One group in each class thus became the "odds" and the other group became the "evens." (seven students who enrolled on the third and fourth days of class all volunteered to be in the experiment, and were assigned to groups in an alternating odd-even sequence as each one formally enrolled.)

Even though students were told they could not withdraw from the experi- ment once their group assignment was determined, we had some concern that those assigned to the video section (the two "even" groups) would merely drop the course. Table II shows that this did not happen. No students dropped the course between the time of their group assignment and the first examination, and equal numbers of students (i.e., two) dropped the course between the first and the second examination. All of the drops throughout the quarter appeared to be

TABLE II

Group Sizes at the Start and at the End of the Course

Group N N N at start after at end of course I st test of course

9.00 even group 28 26 24 9.00 odd group 29 27 24

10.00 even group 29 27 24 10.00 odd group 31 29 27

Total 117 109 99

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grade-related, and seemed in line with the proportion of drops in previous introductory courses taught by the senior author.

Four individual exams were given throughout the quarter (plus a compre- hensive final exam). Each individual test was given to all students on the seventh session (thus between six sessions devoted to classroom lectures). All test ques- tions were multiple choice with roughly 90 percent of the answers having been given in the preceeding six lectures and about 50 percent of the answers con- tained in the text. All test scores represent percentages of the questions correctly answered.

Upon flipping a coin, the "evens" in both the 9:00 and 10:00 classes were assigned for the first six lectures to the room where the instructor presented his lectures. The "odds" in both classes were assigned to an adjoining room with a television monitor on which the lectures were Shown as they were given. In other words, all four groups saw live lectures, the only difference being that the "evens" saw lectures "in-person" and the "odds" saw the same lectures on a television monitor. This particular arrangement was maintained for six lecture sessions; in the seventh session the first test was given. Following this test, the four groups were assigned to in-person and televised lectures in three subsequent blocks of six lectures as shown in Table III.

After the fourth test was given, six more lectures were given, followed by a comprehensive final examination. Because the final was comprehensive, the experiment was deemed completed after the fourth individual examination, and the last set of six lectures was given to all students in both classes in the "in-person classroom."

TABLE 11I

The Study's Experimental Design

Independent V~riable

9:00 class members randomly assigned V even numbers

9:00 class members randomly assigned p odd numbers

I0:00 class,members randomly assigned even ~umb~rs

I0:00 class members randomly assigned odd numbers

Depen- dent Independent Var. Variable

Legend:

P F I K

s p T

V ~ P 8 T

P V

P - In-person lectures; V - Video lectures

Depen- I n d e p e n d e n t Depen- d e n t d e n t I n d e p e n d e n t Depen- Var. Variable Variable dent

Vat. Vat.

P V S T F E H 0 C I U

o V ~ P N D D H

V T p E T

E S E S T S T p V T

Results

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TEST PERFORMANCE

The main findings are presented in Fig. 1. It shows that, with the exception of the first round of tests, no significant differences exist between the groups. The first test reveals a significant, difference (p < 0.05) between the two groups who saw the first six lectures in-person and the two groups who saw the same lectures on television. After the first test, students in the two video groups were informed of the findings and asked for their assessments. Students responded with com- plaints mainly about sound amplification and of not always being able to read what had been written on the chalkboard. (No one manned the camera for the first six lectures, thus restricting the range within which information could be written on the chalkboard.) Students in the two video groups were all given seven extra points on the first exam to bring their average performance up to the other two groups.

Under the assumption that no significant differences would be found between the lecturing modes, the original plan was keep the 9: 00 "video group"

90.

8

t -

O

80-

70-

60-

50 i

1st

LEGEND

Circles ~ 9:00 class groups

Triangles -- i0:00 class groups

Solid Symbols -- Groups exposed to in-person lectures

Open Symbols -- Groups exposed to video lectures Astrices -- Significantly dlfferent standard

errors of the mean

! !

2nd 3~d 4th

Examination

Fig. 1. Average test scores on each of four examinations by the four groups of students (as designated by the legend).

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in the video room for the entire quarter and only to alternate the two 10:00 groups. However, the low average test scores and the complaints by students in both of the video groups following the first test forced serious consideration to be given to abandoning the study. After considering this and other options, the decision was made to continue the study for at least the second test, but on a limited experimental basis. Thus, for the next six lectures, only one of the four groups were assigned to the video room - the "10: 00 odd" group (who had been in the in-person lectures for the first six lectures and had performed the best on the first test). Also, before starting the second round of lectures, we tracked down the sound amplification problems to a poor battery in the microphone worn by the instructor and replaced it. In addition, the camera was manned by work- study students.

The revised plan was to try the set-up with students in the video room one more time, and then terminate the experiment if their average test scores were five points or more below that of the other students. As one can see from Fig. l, the 10:00 odd group again out-performed (albeit only slightly) all three of the other groups, even though the 10:00 odd group had been the only one exposed to the video condition for this second round of lectures. This finding encouraged continuation of the experiment, but with a revised experimental-control sched- ule - i.e., the one shown in Table III.

On the third test, with an experimental and a control group in both the 9: 00 and 10:00 classes, results showed the video group doing slightly, but not significantly, better than their in-person counterparts. The fourth test showed students in the groups exposed to the fourth round of video lectures again doing at least as well, if not better, than students exposed to the in-person lectures.

CLASS ABSENCES

No formal records of class attendance were kept. Instead, on each examina- tion, students were asked to self-report their class absences with the assurance that their reports would not be consulted in assigning final grades (which they were not). Results are shown in Fig. 2. This graph indicates that, while there were some significant group differences in class attendance, these differences are not explainable in terms of in-person versus video lecture exposure. Specifically, significant differences appear in the first round of six lectures. There, the 9 : 00 even group (exposed to the live lectures) reported significantly fewer absences in the first round of lectures. No explanation of this difference can be offered with confidence, but the fact that the two video groups reported absences inter- mediate to the two in-person lecture groups discourages attributing the results to the experiment. During the fourth set of six lectures, one can see in Fig. 2 that whereas students in the 9 : 00 class only missed one lecture on average, students in the 10:00 class missed one and one-half. We can offer no solid explanation for

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2 . 0 -

~' 1 .5- c u~

.J3 <

~- 1.O- ..O E D

Z

0 . 5 -

Triangles -- i0:00 class groups

Solid Symbols -- Groups exposed to in-person lectures

Open Symbols -- Groups exposed to video lectures

Astrices -- Significantly different standard

errors of the mean

l I ! i

1st 2nd 3rd 4th

Examination

Fig. 2. Average number of absences prior to each of four examinations by the four groups of students (as designated by the legend).

this finding either, but again note that it seems to be entirely unrelated to the independent variable.

Discussion

Results of this experiment provide further evidence that students can learn introductory college material as well from video-taped lectures as from lectures taught in-person. The present study strengthens and expands this conclusion in two respects: first, the present study appears to have been the first to have relied upon random assignment of students and to have offered the lectures to the experimental and control groups simultaneously. This eliminates two potential- ly unwanted sources of variance for the dependent measures - (1) self-section and (2) the time of presentation.

Second, this was one of the first studies to use "non-studio" classroom lectures in the TV section (Thorman and Amb, 1974, also seem to have done so). The contention that students in "TV courses" do as well as those in conventional courses because the "TV courses" are of somewhat higher quality (to compensate for the impersonality) has no bearing on the present study.

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As far as the pract ical implicat ions are concerned, this exper iment reinfor- ces the idea tha t v ideo- taped lecturing has a future in higher educat ion. In a

recent survey of over 150 U.S. colleges and universities (Ellis and Curless, in prepara t ion) , 17 percent were found to be current ly using v ideo- taped lecture

courses to at least a l imited extent at this time, vir tual ly all involving large in t roduc to ry course offerings. In light of this and the results of the present study,

we believe tha t guidelines should be p roposed by faculty and adminis t ra t ive representat ives on the future use of v ideo- taped lecturing in higher education.

Acknowledgment

This s tudy was funded in par t by a Bush F o u n d a t i o n Grant . We thank I rv

Curless, R o n Rudser and Steve T h o r o u g h m a n for their assistance.

Notes

For similar conclusions based upon studies of secondary education courses, see Anderson and van der Meer (1954); Los Angeles City School District (1957); Jacobs, Bollenbacher and Keiffer (1961); Jantzen (1963).

References

Alexander, R. D. (1962). "An experiment in teaching mathematics at the college level by closed- circuit television," Dissertation Abstracts 22: 2805.

Anderson, G. R. and van der Meer, A. W. (1954). "A comparative study of the effectiveness of lessons on the slide rule presented via television and in person," Mathematics Teacher 47: 323-327.

Bailey, H. S. (1959). "Teaching physics on closed circuit television," Dissertation Abstracts 19: 1947.

Berger, E. J. (1962). "An investigation of the effectiveness of televised presentations of self-con- tained television adapted lessons on enrichment topics in mathematics," Dissertation Abstracts 23: 1552.

Bickel, R. F. (1965). "A comparative analysis of the effect of television on achievement in a college mathematics course for elementary teactiing majors," Dissertation Abstracts 25: 5777.

Buckler, W. E. (1958). "A college English teacher looks at television: composition," Journal o f Educational Sociology 31: 346-352.

Davies, V., Gross, E., and Short, J. F., Jr. (1958). Experiments in Teaching Effectiveness Applied to Introductory Sociology. Pullman: Washington State University.

Dyner-Bennet, J., Fuller, W. R., Seibert, W. F., and Shanks, M. E. (1958). "Teaching calculus by closed circuit television," American Mathematical Monthly 63: 430-439.

Ellis, L. and Curless I. (in press). "Video taped course offerings in higher education: a survey," College and University.

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Jacobs, J. N., Bollenbacher, J., and Keiffer, M. (1961). "Teaching seventh-grade mathematics by television to homogeneously grouped below-average students," Mathematics Teacher 54: 551 555.

Janes, R. W. (1961). "An eductional experiment with on-campus open-circuit television," Journal of Educational Sociology 34:300 308.

Jantzen, V. W. (1963). "The effectiveness of television teaching of American Government with regular classes in Wichita High School South," Dissertation Abstracts 24: 1029.

Lofthouse, Y. M. S. (t957). "An experiment with closed-circuit televised instruction in teacher education," Dissertation Abstracts 17: 1513.

Los Angeles City School Districts (1955). "An evaluation of closed circuit television for teaching junior college courses. Los Angeles: Division of Extension and Higher Education, Los Angeles City School Districts, 1957," Audio-Visual Communication Review 6: 237.

Spencer, R. E. (1963). "Comparisons of televised with teaching machine and televised with instructor presentations of English Grammar," in C. R. Carpenter and L. P. Greenhill (eds.), Comparative Research on Methods and Media for Presenting Programmed Courses in Mathematics and English. USOE Grant No. 736116. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University, pp. 57-63.

Thorman, J. and Arab, T. (1974). "The video tape presentation versus the live presentation: better, worse or the same?" The Journal 1: 24.

Thorman, J. H. (1975). "Continuing education for adults utilizing videotape as an instructional component," The Journal 2: 21.