Crash Course History of Science: Popular Science for General Education?

摘要

In 2017 Allison Marsh joined the team to create the Crash Course History of Science educational video series for YouTube. She then began incorporating these videos into the online version of a popular introductory survey course at the University of South Carolina, "HIST 108: Science and Technology in World History." During the Summer and Fall terms of 2019, she collected data with the hope of comparing content retention between students who watched Crash Course videos and those who read a traditional textbook. Graduate student Bethany Johnson, a teaching assistant for HIST 108, saw how the students engaged much more dramatically with the videos than with the readings. This case study showed students interacting with the videos in surprising ways and caused Marsh and Johnson to rethink course organization and the pedagogical purposes of a General Education history course.