Grant program: Teaching and Learning Development Grant 

Grant recipient: Naoko Takei, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Project team: Research assistant, TBD

Timeframe: August 2021 to August 2022

Funding: $4,950

Courses addressed: JAPN 110 – Japanese II

Description: The purpose of this project is to examine whether the quality and organization of instructional lecture videos in an asynchronous component of a first-year Japanese language course can help to create successful learning outcomes. Many studies suggest that video-recorded lectures have become the most influential component of learning resources in higher education. Since the implementation of remote teaching, instructors have been encouraged to create videos as part of their lecture materials. This new teaching and learning model resulted in increased time that students are asked to spend on watching videos before attending a synchronous class. Despite efforts to support the creation of effective lecture videos, some instructors are sharing concerns that students do not watch videos carefully or simply do not watch them at all. For this project, I’m interested in creating interactive video quizzes in order to investigate their impact on students’ learning as well as the way they view instructional lecture videos. I believe that the interactive video quizzes will provide an engaging learning environment and assist students to view instructional videos with a specific focus, which should result in better learning outcomes.

Questions addressed: 

• Do interactive video quizzes increase the number of attempts students try to take them as well as the quiz scores? (The interactive video quizzes will be created by H5P that can be embedded in Canvas.)
• To what extent interactive video quizzes encourage students to view instructional lecture videos as part of an asynchronous comportment of a course?

Knowledge sharing: Along with two other colleagues from the department, I am planning to host a brown bag lunch sometime in the future.

I have received a grant from the Japan Foundation Toronto to support the production of videos. Since that grant helps me create more videos, I have invited 6 Japanese language instructors from across Canada to join the project*. We have set up the website where registered instructors can view and copy the URL of the videos. On the website, our goal is to share useful ways of using the videos and set up a discussion section where video users can share their tips or findings in effective ways of using the videos.

*Note: The six other instructors will collaborate to create the videos, but they use the videos in their own way to meet their needs. Thus, the collaboration work does not include the research part in my project.