Winter 2024 Update – Lecture Videos

This past fall semester, I tried something different with the virtual class session videos, processing them during the semester week-by-week. It did work out pretty well, as a task to be done over the weekend (and the video uploaded early next week). They are in the usual playlists, for now at the end of the list (to be moved into the right place when I update the Canvas shells in a few weeks): Physics 4A playlist and Physics 4B playlist.

Now, for something completely new: towards the end of the last semester, I thought to take on a project that addresses a couple chronic issues when it comes to lecture videos. The first is a feedback I have gotten a few times regarding the length and the organization of the videos, boiling down to some students wishing that they were put into one long video instead of broken into clips the way they are now. The 10 to 20-minute video clip made sense before YouTube videos had chapters, but, well, now they have chapters, so an hour to two-hour long video can be pretty navigable (and allow students to watch a whole set of lectures through without interruption).

The second is the more serious issue: very few students watch the lecture videos. Which is challenging and regrettable, because the feedback I get from the few students who do put in the time to watch the lecture videos (and I don’t mean people who just skip to the homework help videos) is that they do learn from the videos. For vast majority of students who end the class with C (because they didn’t learn to apply any physics problem-solving techniques), what I see has been that they barely put in any time into watching the lecture videos. Some never started watching; others started watching but found one or two minor issue with one early video as an excuse to not watch the rest of the videos.

The homework system I use, MyOpenMath, does have an assignment setup that might address this issue, called “video-cued assessment,” and the project I took on is to collect the lecture videos into sets of about 1 hour in length each (some of them maybe up to 1.5 hours; never longer than 2 hours), both to standardize their presentation (and re-edit some clips that need better color balancing, etc.) and to use as basis for the video-cued assessment.

In terms of effectiveness of this approach (will more students watch lecture videos?) I’ll need to see in Spring 2025. In the meantime, the videos I am putting together (I’ve done 10 of 30 so far and have uploaded 4 of them; the rest are on daily—workdaily—release schedule) are in this playlist: Physics 4A in 30 Lectures.

Lecture videos uploaded – Spring 2024 Physics 4A and 4C, and Fall 2023 Physics 4B

Edited lecture videos for the most recently completed classes (Physics 4A and 4C) have been uploaded to our YouTube channel, in the usual playlists: Physics 4A playlist and Physics 4C playlist. Also, the backlog of Physics 4B videos from Fall 2023 semester has been processed (and in Physics 4B playlist).

During the last semester, it was feasible to process these virtual class session videos during the semester (I kinda had to in Spring 2024, as I had two sections of Physics 4A and I couldn’t hold a separate set of virtual class sessions for the later section of Physics 4A), so I think I’ll try doing that this semester again. It’ll help lighten the prep work between semesters.

Finally, I recorded a lecture I’ve been meaning to for a while: Physics 4B – Intro to Gauss’s Law and Electric Flux. It replaces the one set of in-person lectures that I’ve never been all that happy with. I have even tried re-editing it before (Physics 4B – Introduction to Gauss’s Law, ver 2), but at some point, the only way to fix it properly was to re-record it from scratch. It took a long time writing out the full script (I usually just wing it live) and then trying to actually follow that script for the recording (but, you know, not actually learn the lines, because I’m not an actor), but, well, I think it’s definitely better than the other lecture. I’ll have to see what the reception is like.

Lecture videos uploaded – Fall 2022 and Spring 2023

Edited lecture videos for Physics 4A (Spring 2023), Physics 4B (Fall 2022), and Physics 4C (Spring 2023) have been uploaded to our YouTube channel.

As usual, the most recent orientation session video has replaced the older orientation session video, at the beginning of the playlist. The newly edited videos are at the end of the playlist, and as I work through updating next semester’s course sites on Canvas LMS (Physics 4A and 4B for Fall 2023), I will place these videos into proper place.

Oh, and one new playlist I’m creating (mostly for material that I imagine I need to do on a semesterly basis, because things change between semesters): Physics 4 Conceptual Questions.

And as usual, the regular playlists are organized by courses:

Lecture note on motion graphs

This is something to fill in the gap in OpenStax coverage I found last semester, motion graphs. Other textbooks I have used before have a section or a subsection dedicated to this topic, which seems to be missing on OpenStax University Physics Volume 1.

So, this is the note written to cover the gap (may need to revise a little in the future, after lecturing on additional examples).

Spring 2022 lecture videos posted

I finished processing recorded virtual class sessions from Spring 2022 (for Physics 4A and Physics 4C) and posted them on our YouTube channel (https://youtube.com/c/CoAPhysics). As usual, they are added at the end of the existing playlists (Physics 4A playlist and Physics 4C playlist) and moved around as I prepare for the new semester (the videos occur roughly in the order they appear in the course LMS site).

Oh, I guess this means the Physics 4C playlist will remain in that order for some time, as I am working on Physics 4A and 4B material for the upcoming semester.