Session T2J 978-1-4244-4714-5/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE October 18 - 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX 39 th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference T2J-1 A Study of the Effect of Instructional Media in an Undergraduate Electrical Circuits Course Xiaoyan Mu, Deborah Walter, and Carlotta Berry Rose-Human Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, IN mu@rose-hulman.edu, Deborah.Walter@Rose-Hulman.Edu, Carlotta.Berry@Rose-Hulman.Edu Pinghua Jiang Qingdao University, Qingdao, China jiangpinghua@hotmail.com Abstract - In various studies, it has been demonstrated that instructional media plays an important role in instructors’ teaching and students’ learning. The purpose of this study is to assess the students’ preferences for different instructional media and the impact of different instructional media on the students’ learning and course- related behavior in an undergraduate electrical circuit’s course. The instructional media under study were: Computer-based PowerPoint presentation, whiteboard only, combination of PowerPoint and whiteboard and combination of printed handouts and whiteboard. Two schools participated in this study: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (RHIT), Terre Haute, IN and Qingdao University, Qingdao, P. R. China. At RHIT, two midterm exams and one final exam were used to assess the learning effectiveness of different instructional media. To understand the course related behavior, each of the instructors were asked to assess their students’ behavior in terms of attendance, amount of classroom interaction, percent of homework completion and web logins. At the end of the quarter, a questionnaire was collected from participating students to measure their preference for the instructional media. The same questionnaire was given to the students at Qingdao University to study their preference for different instructional media. Index Terms - Instructional Media, PowerPoint, Students’ learning INTRODUCTION In the last 15 years, PowerPoint has become more popular in college classrooms [1]-[4]. Many professors still prefer the traditional “chalk-and-talk” lectures. Although there has been much discussion concerning using PowerPoint in lectures [5]- [8], there is limited evidence to support the positive impact of a PowerPoint presentation on the student’s learning, attitude and his/her course-related behavior (attendance, classroom participation and so on). Few studies exist to show the benefit of combining PowerPoint with traditional whiteboard lectures and reaping the benefit of both of them. One advantage of using PowerPoint is that it saves the students’ time in taking notes so that the instructor can cover more material and examples in the class. An alternate way is to give the students printed handouts in class. This study will focus on the following four instructional media and assess the effectiveness of them: 1. Whiteboard only (The instructor uses the whiteboard mainly and doesn’t use any multimedia equipment. No printed handouts are given for most of the lectures. The instructor writes important concepts and solve problems on the whiteboard) 2. Computer-based PowerPoint presentation only (The instructor gives PowerPoint presentations in lectures and rarely writes on whiteboard. The professor presents a set of static slides and both the problem statements and solutions to the examples are presented in the slides.) 3. Combination of PowerPoint and whiteboard. (The instructor uses PowerPoint for key concepts and principles but whiteboard for examples. The PowerPoint slides have only the problem statements for in-class examples and the instructor works through the problems on the whiteboard.) 4. Combination of printed handouts and whiteboard. (The instructor works though in-class examples on the whiteboard and gives the students a copy of printed handouts which contains the basic principles and problem statements.) The study was conducted during the 2007 and 2008 school years and included more than 200 engineering students who completed the electrical circuits course. METHOD Participants Two schools participated in the study: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (RHIT), Terre Haute, IN and Qingdao University, Qingdao, P. R. China. RHIT is a private engineering institute in the Midwest United States and there are around 1800 full time students. Qingdao University is a comprehensive public university in China and the student population of full time students is approximately 40,000. The participants at RHIT were the students who enrolled in the Introduction to Electrical Circuits course in fall 2007. Six instructors taught 9 sections of 210 students and 134 students