The study by Gómez-Ortega, Macías-Guillén, Sánchez-de Lara and Delgado-Jalón examines a video-based learning approach designed to address content that students perceive as particularly challenging in university courses. The study’s main contribution lies in the fact that the videos are not created solely on the basis of instructors’ judgment, but rather on a prior diagnosis of students’ difficulties.
To achieve this, the authors construct a “difficulty map” using self-assessment questionnaires, perceived-difficulty scales and open-ended questions, so that the audiovisual resources focus specifically on the concepts that cause students the greatest problems with understanding. The experience was implemented in a Financial Accounting II course, although the authors present the procedure as a methodology that can be transferred to other fields of knowledge.
The research was conducted over three academic years and involved several stages: collecting student feedback, identifying the most difficult content, producing targeted videos and subsequently evaluating their effects. In the main phase, the videos were made available to 210 students, while their grades were compared with those of 230 students who had previously taken the course without access to these materials.
In addition, 106 students completed a satisfaction survey, validated through expert judgment and showing high internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.925). The results reveal a very positive assessment of the experience: 80% of respondents said that the videos helped them gain a deeper understanding of the course content, 85.85% considered the experience useful or very useful, and positive perceptions of the videos’ usefulness reached 91%.
Beyond students’ reported satisfaction, the study also identifies favorable differences in academic performance among those who had access to the videos. The average final grade was higher in this group, and the analysis of differences in means produced statistically significant results in the overall comparison and in most of the analyses conducted by instructor and examination period. The authors therefore conclude that an audiovisual strategy is particularly effective when content is not selected generically, but instead on the basis of the actual difficulties identified by students themselves.
The value of the approach lies precisely in this cycle of diagnosis, intervention and evaluation: it turns student feedback into useful information for designing more precisely targeted teaching resources and positions students as active participants in improving the teaching and learning process.
---
How to Cite: Gómez-Ortega, A., Macías-Guillén, A., Sánchez-de Lara, M. Ángel, & Delgado-Jalón, M. L. (2024). An effective video-based learning approach: a solution for complex university subjects. RIED-Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, 27(1), 345–372. https://doi.org/10.5944/ried.27.1.37569
