(87e) Problem Solving When Textbook Problems Are Replaced with Student-Written Youtube Problems

Employers are seeking creative problem-solvers, while faculty are often challenged getting students ready for the industry. One way to improve problem solving ability is by practicing with homework problems. Text-based questions with industrial relevance may be engaging to students. However, using the same ‘textbook’ problems can lead to the solution manual dilemma where solutions are readily available online. Here, engaging students with interesting, relevant, and real world problems tie activities in a video to a homework-style problem, which are called YouTube problems. Leveraging established learning theories, visuals play vital role in creating long and short-term memories. Moreover, incorporating visuals in teaching have led to positive learning outcomes in engineering education. A YouTube problem is created when a student selects an online video, writes course-related problems based on the video, and creates a solution. Student-written YouTube problems can be applied as future homework practice or assessment. YouTube problems have been written for variety of courses over 5+ years, and we have an archive of more than 500 YouTube problems. The research here explored replacing textbook homework problems with student-written YouTube problems. To answer a series of research questions over two treatment and two control cohorts, we used three measures: 1. Problem solving using an established rubric PROCESS, 2. Perception of difficulty with NASA TLX survey, and 3. Learning attitudes through another survey known as CLASS. Overall, students have reported comparable rigor levels for YouTube and problems from textbook and displayed higher problem-solving abilities with YouTube problems. Students’ attitudes increased toward engineering.