Strategies for improving online student learning in undergraduate material science

Since the outburst of the Covid-19 pandemic it is very common that students widely use videos in higher education. In an introductory material science course for mechanical and automotive engineers lecture videos have successfully been implemented in inverted classroom teaching scenarios at HTW Berlin. Inspired by former students a set of lecture videos is produced during a one term project each semester. This peer-to-peer approach is an important aspect because students' needs and their perspective on teaching material is directly included in the videos. In this study five different lecture film types were investigated with regard to students' performance and micro grading comprising of: swipe technique, stop motion, power point animation, hand drawn and video scribe. In general, students' performance was found to be more successful before the pandemic. However, the type of lecture film types could not directly be related to student grades but are rated successful regarding concentration, responsibility and attentiveness as well as depth of discussions during class.