Media techniques to engage students in research papers Cock van Oosterhout School of Environmental Sciences

Evolutionary genetics and conservation biology Study of evolution has >150 year history Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) Google Scholar search terms “evolution genetics conservation biology” >2.5 million hits The challenge – getting students to read them!

My solutions have been (so far) Talis Aspire system (online reading list) PDFs of papers on the BB DropBox with PDFs Presenting paper in a lecture Discussing papers in workshops / colloquium Showing the actual books present in the library Result – lots of variation in reading effort among students (and a painful back carrying these domes)

Desperate measures Grouping the PDFs into folders named, e.g.: “Really interesting!” “Must read!” “Exam question material!” And even more desperately, a folder named “Sex, sex, sex!” (This refers to sexual selection)

Are media techniques the solution? Discussed this with Alicia Mcconnell (ITCS) The idea – showing the background story behind the paper How? – Video recording an interview with the scientist leading the research Advantages: Audio-visual, not just dull text Human story behind the research

The “experiment” Recorded 2 interviews: Prof Thomas Mock Prof Carlos Peres Interview 2

The “experiment” Recorded 2 interviews with 2 scientists Prof Thomas Mock and Prof Carlos Peres Discussed several of their research papers PDFs of papers were uploaded on the BB Recording the level of understanding of these papers compared to “control” papers Based on student questionnaire N=15 students Negative control – papers discussed in my lectures N=50 papers in total

The Results No difference in reading effort or understanding of papers

Results (part 2) No statistically significant difference depending on file name Having “conservation”, “evolution” or “sex” in file name made no difference However, PDFs at top of 1st page were read more often than those on 2nd page Caveats: Only 15 students Data gathered too much time before exam

On the upside… Students did say they enjoyed watching the videos (And I enjoyed making them!) Learned something from colleagues that I did not know by reading the paper Tristan Holden produced some shorter videos for the website

In summary Is a video interview the solution to engage students in reading papers? Evidence is not compelling… (no, probably not!) Would I make another video? Yes, absolutely!

Thanks to Tristan Holden (ITCS - Staff) Alicia Mcconnell (ITCS) Media Production & Support Technician Alicia Mcconnell (ITCS) And thanks to you for listening!