I watched the animation on YouTube — it conveys a lot of information in compact form. It would be interesting to compare students learning using this tool, vs. students learning with a good textbook.  Although Siloa Willis suggests that such animations are the way that her generation likes to learn things, I have also seen studies that suggest that many students prefer studying from books.

    It's not an either/or of course but you might have a nice opportunity for a little study to better understand strengths and weaknesses of each medium. 

Thanks for the explanations of why you are developing video animations of geo processes.  I wonder if you all might consider teaching students to create and evaluate such videos?

https://nagt.org/nagt/teaching_resources/sponso...

This site summarizes a number of geoscience teaching projects that might provide some insights.

How will you evaluate student learning? Is there a plan to see if students learn more from this method?

Thanks Patricia

   I teach a course on how to make Geoscience Animations and Videos. it is an upper division elective for Geoscience majors.  You can watch a video about it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&a...

We are also teaching workshops about this at GSA 2019 Phoenix and AGU 2019 SF.

Jeff Ryan at U S Florida is handling the assessment, which is a key part of our project.

Very interesting project! Congratulations, Siloa, on the work you have done for the project. How you actively promoted the use of the YouTube video in any classrooms, or otherwise advertised it? How could you measure the effectiveness of the video in promoting the learning of the nomenclature and concepts shown? Are there any plans to do this?

This is wonderful. Free and accurate on-demand science content! Have you done any evaluation to understand if students learn content better from this video vs. other methods? 

I agree with the spirit of this video!  Technology is not well-integrated in many STEM subjects, so I appreciate this approach.  Sort of seems like creating a video showcase as opposed to reading individually published papers, interestingly.  This also could help support online learners, who may have an added disconnect of not having an in-person professor/instructor, and the platform of YouTube prompts students to engage in learning about other similar topics through the "related videos" algorithm.

Perhaps you cannot do an assessment of textbooks versus videos/animations at this point, but do you plan to assess which lesson units were most enjoyed by the students or which lessons contained the most comprehension on exams (were lessons with supporting animations retained more than those without?)?  Along the lines of this, do geoscience animations increase confidence in students' understanding of curricula?  You may have a potential collaboration with Jason Jones at NC State to evaluate the efficiency of this method.  Check out his video for the CLASS web tool. https://stemforall2019.videohall.com/presentations/1431

Thanks! Guys for your comments. I am working with Siloa, and we are all from UTD Geoscience Studio. So actually there are already plenty of research on comparing video or most other technology (such as TV back to 1970) to other methods. Most of time you would find that in terms of teaching effectiveness the container is not very important. Effective or not depends on how you curricula design or convey the information. Video, though,does help share information better, save time of learning if well designed. Therefore, our research at UTD is more focusing on how to better design video to make them more effective while Jeff at USF is more focusing on overall psychological assessment.

 I think the 21st science school needs to be linked strongly to a content-focusd video/animation team.  How to do this is the question. Thanks fro the info about the CLASS web tool, which I've shared with my team.

Nice work and very much needed!  I will certainly look to take advantage of the videos. 

The nomenclature, as you suggest, is certainly a challenge but it has always struck me as similar (if not less onerous) than in other STEM fields (molecular biology, immunology).  I've come to think (but not know) that geological time is a substantial challenge for students.  Animation is a wonderful way to speed up the processes but that in itself does not necessarily help the students understand real rates.  I'm curious whether this deep time problem is really a struggle for students and whether your efforts might also also it? 

Thanks again for this work!