Ithaca College

Aaron Weinberg, Associate Professor of Mathematics, and Matt Thomas, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, have been awarded an NSF Collaborative Research Grant of $185,000 to study how students make sense of and learn from instructional videos in calculus.  The work is a collaboration with faculty from the University of Central Arkansas and Oklahoma State University.  

From the project description:

"Calculus is a cornerstone of college-level mathematics programs and is an integral part of science, engineering, and technology programs. Less than half of all college students who intend to pursue a major in STEM fields succeed in doing so, and educational researchers have found that calculus presents a significant hurdle for these students. Over the past few decades, instructors have become increasingly willing to experiment with innovative teaching formats, such as “flipped” classrooms. In the flipped classroom format, students watch instructional videos outside of class to promote a more active learning environment. Despite this increasing popularity, relatively little is known about how students watch and learn from these instructional videos. To help instructors design videos to better promote student learning of mathematics, this project will collect data about how students use, engage with, and learn from calculus videos. Furthermore, this project will investigate the impact that various ways of structuring the video-watching experience has on student learning. In doing so, this project will generate new knowledge about the effectiveness of various implementation methods for instructional videos in supporting students’ productive ways of understanding foundational calculus concepts. "