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

2. 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!

3. 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)

4. 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)

5. 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

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

7. 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

8. The Results
No difference in reading effort or understanding of papers

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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!

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