The effectiveness of 'pencasts' in physics courses

TL;DR

This paper investigates how student-created pencasts, videos with narrated problem solving, impact learning in a university electromagnetism course, showing higher performance among students who submit more pencasts.

Contribution

It introduces the use of pencasts in upper-division physics courses and analyzes their correlation with student performance, providing practical implementation suggestions.

Findings

Students who submit more pencasts tend to perform better in the course.

Pencasts can be effectively integrated into university physics curricula.

Higher pencast submission rates correlate with improved student grades.

Abstract

Pencasts are videos of problem solving with narration by the problem solver. Pedagogically, students can create pencasts to illustrate their own problem solving to the instructor or to their peers. Pencasts have implications for teaching at multiple levels from elementary grades through university courses. In this article, we describe the use of pencasts in a university level upperdivision Electromagnetic Fields course usually taken by junior and senior physics majors. For each homework assignment, students created and submitted pencasts of ordinary problems several days before the problem set was due. We compare students' performance in the class (grades for pencast submission excluded) with the pencast submission rate. Students who submitted more pencasts tend to do better in the course. We conclude with some practical suggestions for implementing pencasts in other courses.