Assessing the Use of a Video to Teach the Laplace Expansion Theorem in Higher Education

Abstract

The increasing use of learning videos in Higher Education (HE) have revolutionizing the traditional teaching environment. b-Mat@plicada is a b-Learning Mathematics course mainly composed of educational videos that the HE students of a Portuguese Institution can used for their study as a complement of the face-to-face lectures. In a previous research, an experiment was performed in the classroom context, where 49 HE students watched the b-Mat@plicada video on Matrix Multiplication as replacement of the traditional face-to-face explanation. Then, they were asked to solve individually an exercise, and respond to a survey assessing attitudes, perception, and satisfaction. In the present study, 63 HE students participated to a similar experiment with the b-Mat@plicada video on the Laplace Expansion Theorem, where a specific didactical approach is used. Beyond the comparison between the results of the two experiments, the findings of this study revealed that most students achieved the leaning objectives and appreciated the quality of the video in terms of image, sound, clarity and useless. The necessity of video contents in teaching was also expressed, mainly to clarify doubts and remember contents. However, all students considered that videos cannot replace traditional face-to-face classrooms, mainly due to the importance of the Teacher-Student dialogue.