Introducing Geological Interesting Places with Videos

This page authored by Ning Wang and Robert J Stern, the University of Texas at Dallas. Based on a paper from the authors in review, 'Creating Videos to Introduce Place-Contexts for Geoscience Majors: The Permian Basin Example'.
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Initial Publication Date: September 1, 2021

Summary

This activity provides a workflow and an example of using the workflow to create videos to effectively and efficiently introduce geologic interesting places.

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Context

Audience

Geoscientists can universally use the guidance to create their own place-introductory videos. This guidance can be used for classrooms that let students make videos to deepen their understanding of geologic topics as well as video-based science communication too. Geoscience majors who take science communication classes will benefit more from this activity.

Skills and concepts that students must have mastered

not applicable

How the activity is situated in the course

not applicable

Goals

Content/concepts goals for this activity

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Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity

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Other skills goals for this activity

This activity is mainly designed to help geoscience majors, teachers, and experts who want to create their own videos to effectively and efficiently introduce geologic interesting places. However, students may benefit from the design recommendations to learn more about how to communicate geological information about a place via making videos.

Description and Teaching Materials

This activity is mainly designed to help geoscience majors, teachers, and experts who want to create their own videos to effectively and efficiently introduce geologic interesting places. We present video design tools intended to help geoscience educators make their own PBE videos using key PBE video design elements and strategies based on a simple framework and salient elements of educational psychology. We assessed the Permian Basin video in three upper-division geoscience classes at the University of Texas at Dallas using a one-group pretest-posttest design (The test sheet is shared too). The results show that most students follow the video easily and significantly improved their knowledge of the Permian Basin. The generalized workflow and design tools can also be used or revised to guide the design of PBE videos for other regions and natural features. This can be used for classrooms that let students make videos to deepen their understanding of geologic topics too.

Materials:

  1. Permian Basin Introduction Video: [Video]Permian Basin Introduction (MP4 Video 52.9MB Aug31 21) 
  2. Permian Basin Knowledge Assessment Sheet (assessing the basic geographic, plate tectonics evolution and sedimentary features of Permian Basin): Permian Basin Knowledge Assessment Sheet (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 18kB Aug31 21) 

Teaching Notes and Tips

When creating videos with the workflow, students or educators may want to read the original paper for more details.


Assessment

The assessment sheet is attached. The authors have conducted a multi-class assessment on the Permian Basin video. The results of pretest and posttest show that there was a significant improvement in student knowledge of the Permian Basin after video was watched as shown by difference between overall pretest (M = 41, SD = 13) and posttest (M = 75, SD = 15) results. The Shapiro-Wilk normality test of pretest and posttest results show both groups are normal distributed (both p-value> 0.05). The further t-test of the pretest and posttest data, t(53) = 12.9, p < .001, shows that the Permian Basin video is statistically effective for students. The Cohen'dav value is 2.473 which indicates the Permian Basin video's usefulness. Complete, anonymized data can be found in the original paper (in review, 2021).

References and Resources

Users can also access the video from the YouTube link: https://youtu.be/mSJO5Xr2zgU