Project Investigator(s): Strang Burton, Instructor, Linguistics
Project Description
Multimedia resources, because they let students hear speakers and see visuals of speech production, seem like a natural fit for teaching linguistics and languages. But do they actually improve student outcomes and engagement in large undergraduate classrooms? And if so, what specific ways of deploying them work best? Recent UBC TLEF development projects have created a rich variety of multimedia resources for linguistics, potentially benefiting thousands of UBC undergraduates over the coming years. The goal of this project is to systematically test these multimedia materials to ensure that they and similar materials are used effectively at UBC, and beyond.
Impact on teaching and learning at UBC
If the specific materials do have a significant positive effect on student outcomes and engagement, they will help the learning of at least 1400 students each year at UBC (650 in Linguistics 101, and another 700 in Linguistics 100 and 80 in Linguistics 170. If the results show it really is worth using multimedia in these ways, it would be reasonable to think the results might influence the way linguistics is taught in general.
Achieved Outcomes
From this project we found that the learning outcomes are actually worse with the video (the students take longer to learn, and don’t learn as well when controlling for time on task); but the students also report that their engagement with the videos is better, and they prefer the experience.