2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Instructional videos have become a prominent fixture in higher education. However, little empirical research has tested their direct impact on student performance, particularly in the context of construction education. As part of a broader investigation on the use of instructional videos in construction education, 46 students in a building construction course at a major university in the United States participated in a 12-week research study aimed at understanding the ability of supplemental instructional videos (SIVs) to improve student performance on reading quizzes. SIVs are a popular subcategory of instructional videos that have been promoted in the literature for being effective at improving student cognition and learning. The SIVs for the course were developed by the instructor in accordance with an interdisciplinary synthesis of best practices for video design. They were delivered online as complementary learning materials for course readings in a repeated-measures crossover experiment. ANOVAs and t-tests were used to compare average quiz scores. Contrary to much of the previous research, results from the experiment indicated no significant differences in performance between students who received SIVs and the control group. This outcome was the same regardless of student gender, number of years in college, final class grade, and the complexity of the learning topic. These results suggest that construction instructors who are considering using SIVs specifically to boost classroom performance should moderate their expectations. This study was underway when the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly moved all courses at the university online. At the completion of the study, in-person and online modalities were also compared, revealing that a statistically significant increase in student performance accompanied the online period of instruction, independent of SIV treatment.