MAKING AND ASSESSING A SHORT VIDEO TO TEACH UPPER DIVISION UNDERGRADUATE GEOSCIENCE MAJORS ABOUT THE PERMIAN BASIN OF TEXAS AND NEW MEXICO

We want to understand how to design and use an educational video to help upper division Geoscience majors understand the Permian Basin. This sedimentary basin is very important to the economy of Texas and New Mexico but most students don’t know much about it, partly because there is little written about it in most textbooks and instructors have few materials available to use in lecture. There are no good videos about the Permian basin on the YouTube or other video outlets. Our efforts to remedy this consisted of three parts: (1) Prepare and give a brief (10 question, multiple choice) test to a UTD junior-level majors class “Stratigraphy and Sedimentology” and use these results to (2) Design and construct a video about the Permian Basin; and (3) Show the video to the class and re-assess student comprehension. We aimed the video at this audience because these students should have a sufficient background to build on: they should understand geologic time, know basic sediment types, have a feel for what is a sedimentary basin, and know something about how oil forms and where it is found. It took 2 months to build a 6 minute long video, which was also the interval between the pre- and post- video assessments. The mean score for the pretest was 3.7/10 (n=16) indicating weak knowledge and for the post-test was 7.5/10 (n = 19); these results demonstrate that our video had a significant and positive impact on student understanding of the Permian Basin. Our results further indicate that well-designed educational video that is targeted appropriately and assessed in the classroom can significantly increase improve student understanding of key geoscientific problems. These results will inform our future efforts to create and assess geoscience educational videos, see https://utdgss2016.wixsite.com/utdgss.