Video Explanations of Solutions for Improved Student Performance

The main challenge author faced while teaching circuit analysis course was to motivate students to put required effort on homework problems. Students tend to copy the solutions from others, which adversely affects their learning. This was indicated by the data of student grades and course evaluation. This can be referred as “Case A”. To overcome this challenge, instructor required each student to record a video explanation of homework solution. This approach yielded significant improvement in student exams and class performance as well as student course evaluations as indicated by the data. This can be referred as “Case B”.Although incorporating video explanations significantly improved student learning, it heavily increased the grading workload. In other words, “Case B” is much better than “Case A” but it still needs improvement for practical implementation.This paper presents “Case C” which is improved version of “Case B”. It explains how the author used a combination of quizzes along with video explanations to address this issue. The new approach reduced the grading workload by half without compromising student learning. The data of student grades and course evaluation for “Case C” is statistically similar to “Case B”.This paper also presents other ways to further reduce the grading workload and incorporate video explanations for large class sizes.