Adding Teacher-Created Motivational Video to an ITS

Kim Kelly; Neil Heffernan; Sidney D’Mello; Jeffrey Namais; Amber Chauncey Strain

Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society (FLAIRS) -- 2013

Keywords

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Research Brief

This work presented two studies that examined the effects of teacher created motivational videos presented to struggling students. These studies applied well accepted theories on perceived value, motivation, and growth mindset to better understand how students’ perseverance toward and perceptions about math could be influenced.

In Study 1, 24 7th grade students were blocked into groups by prior knowledge, with eight students assigned to each condition. Students took a pretest, a preconception survey, completed their homework assignment, retook the survey, and then took a posttest. Results of students who completed all tasks (n = 16) revealed that the value video successfully boosted appraisals of math value. The control video did not produce significant findings.

Study 2 replicated Study 1 with a larger population of 76 8th grade students and found that among a treated sample of sixty students, those who saw the value video had significantly higher homework completion rates (95%) when compared to students who saw the control video (70%) or no video (69%). However, in the subsample of students who completed all subtasks (n = 27), survey results failed to replicate Study 1.

These studies served as a proof-of-concept examining the potential benefits of including low cost teacher-created motivational interventions within mathematics homework in online learning.