a. Video vs. Text Feedback

This study was an initial exploration into replacing textual ASSISTments feedback with matched content videos. It is related to Rich Mayer's Multimedia principles.

This study uses:

- 1. Stand alone problem set (using the choose condition).
  2. A problem set where there is a set number of problems.
  3. Using the scaffold response.

The Problem Set

A choose condition is used

Each student sees a total of 11 problems, 6 of them are Pythagorean Theorem problems.

This problem set starts with a linear section. The ID for this problem set is PSAHVAN in case you want to make a copy and take a closer look. There is an introduction about setting the volume on the computer to be ready for the video. Then comes the experiment which has a choose condition. Finally there are 4 survey questions.

There were 4 conditions with different orders of video and text. Note how the Choose Condition is evoked fro this section. The published study used Group 1 and 3 as one condition (video first) and Group 2 and 4 (text first) . The first problem was experiment and the second problem was the assessment of the experiment.

You can see here how group 2 was set up in linear order.

The Conditions

Scaffolding is used to deliver the text and the video feedback.

Text Feedback

Video Feedback

Students received text hints as usual. Here is an example of a problem, with the feedback provided as four levels of scaffolding. In order to see the feedback, students needed to either answer incorrectly at each step, or ask that the problem be broken down into steps. Click on any of the images below to enlarge.

Main Problem:

Students received an isomorphic question with matched content video feedback. For these videos, the researcher simply read the scripts found in the control while explaining the problem on a whiteboard. The videos were uploaded to YouTube and embedded within each scaffolding level. Click on any of the images below to view the videos.

Main Problem:

Scaffolding level 1:

Scaffolding level 2:

Scaffolding level 3:

Scaffolding level 4 (bottom out):

This appeared as a peer review publication:

Ostrow, K. & Heffernan, N. T. (2014). Testing the Multimedia Principle in the Real World: A Comparison of Video vs. Text Feedback in Authentic Middle School Math Assignments. The International Educational Data Mining Conference. Retrieved March 10, 2014, from http://tiny.cc/ostrow2014-EDM. All the low level data and materials are publicly available here http://tiny.cc/ostrow2014Materials.