Abstract
The literature suggests that students tend to prefer in-person lectures to video lectures. This paper identifies potential causes of this phenomenon and triggers of student engagement in a flipped-classroom environment.
Eight short in-house mathematics videos were prepared and made available to foundation engineering students on the university’s virtual learning environment, prior to each topic being discussed in class. The in-house videos were viewed more than accompanying external on-line video lectures for all topics covered. Students preferred in-house videos with a voice describing a drawing as it is being drawn, not one drawn earlier, and an equation as it is being written, not one written earlier. In-house videos that were produced using high numbers of pre-prepared pages tended to be viewed less. These findings suggest a gradient of student engagement from the external on-line video lecture to the interactive group learning experience. Three evidence-based stages of student engagement are proposed: (1) external video, (2) in-house video with high numbers of pre-prepared pages and (3) in-house video with low numbers of pre-prepared pages. Further validation of these stages of student engagement, and an exploration of lecturer preparedness and social presence during the production of short in-house mathematics videos, is recommended.