Tutorial vs. Didactic Videos in Online Learning Environments
The main goal of this Tutorial video project is to bring active learning into online courses. Instead of featuring only instructors presenting materials alone in lecturing videos, tutorial videos feature dialogues between instructors and students in the videos. This innovative way of recording videos was first proposed by Dr. Michelene Chi, and I was the Postdoctoral Researcher in Dr. Chi’s lab leading an NSF funded tutorial-style video project. Based on the results of this project, we further submitted a tier-2 NSF grant proposal and the proposal was successfully granted. To our knowledge, very limited studies have been conducted in authentic online courses. Therefore, at Eastern we are testing whether tutorial-style instructional videos will result in better student learning outcomes and will increase student engagement with the course content in an authentic online course. Below are selected papers published for this project.
- Ding, L., Cooper, K. M., Stephens, M. D., Chi, M. T. H., & Brownell, S. E. (2021). Learning from error episodes in dialogue-videos: The influence of prior knowledge. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 37(4), 20-32. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.6239
- Ding, L., Adams, J., Stephen, M., Brownell, S., & Chi, M. T. H. (2018). Failure to replicate using dialogue videos in learning: Lessons learned from an authentic course. Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on the Learning Sciences (ICLS), London.
- Cooper, K. M., Ding, L., Stephens, M. D., Chi, M. T., & Brownell, S. E. (2018). A course-embedded comparison of instructor-generated videos of either an instructor alone or an instructor and a student. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 17(2), ar31.
(Screenshots of a tutorial-video and a didactic-video on the same topic)
gEchoLu: Gamified Online Discussions
gEchoLu was a gamified online discussion tool that I designed and developed with my co-worker, Dr. Erkan Er. Besides all the common online discussion functions, gEchoLu had several game elements that allowed practitioners to gamify their online discussions. EchoLu and the gamified version gEchoLu have been tested in several undergraduate courses and graduate courses for the purpose of promoting students’ online help-seeking behaviors and their motivation and engagement in online discussions. The results have been reported in several papers:
- Ding, L., Kim, C., & Orey, M. (2020). Design of gamified asynchronous online discussions. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 29(5), 631-647. https://doi.org/10.1080/1475939X.2020.1801495
- Ding, L. (2019). Applying gamifications to asynchronous online discussions: A mixed methods study. Computers in Human Behavior, 91, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.09.022
- Ding, L., Er, E., & Orey, M. (2018). An exploratory study of student engagement in gamified online discussions. Computers & Education, 120, 213-226. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.02.007
(A screenshot of gEchoLu)
- Ding, L. & Er, E. (2018). Determinants of college students’ use of online collaborative help-seeking tools. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 34(2), 129-139. http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/jcal.12221
(A screenshot of EchoLu)
About Lu Ding 