Engagement of millennial students using web-based screen movies to replace traditional lecture in lecture/lab courses

An emerging literature focuses on differences in learning style between the so-called millennial generation and preceding generations of students. Concurrently, engineering educators have developed a number of intuitions about millennial students, most with the common theme of lowered tolerance for lecture settings. Two current threads addressing the “lower attention span problem” are (a) approaches under the rubric active learning and (b) technology developments such as web-enabled screen movies and pod-casts. The second thread is often aimed at a technology “fix.” Experience shows that any technology fix is of itself minimal value. Specifically, our research question is the following: In traditional lecture/laboratory courses what is the effect of replacing lecture sessions with web-based, voice-over slide presentations punctuated with full screen demonstrations and interactive quizzes? We report results from a side-by-side study that replaces lecture with screen movies for three of ten lab sections in a high enrollment, computer tools and problem solving course. Results generally indicate no significant difference between the treatments for learning outcomes, attitudes towards engineering, and attitudes towards the screen movies. Student survey data indicates very favorable attitudes towards the screen movies in general. The results are encouraging given the early state of screen movie development.