Employing videos in teaching laboratory skills and the associated student experience

Current educational systems support the notion that, students who have studied in the 21st century, are more inclined to favour a visually orientated approach to learning. In this study, the authors created ten educational videos to be shared with students prior to attending their laboratory sessions. A questionnaire was used as data collection tool to assess the engagement of students‘ with the laboratory videos, measure the impact of the videos on students‘ learning and identify if there are factors that can influence a student‘s level of participation with videos as a method of learning. The questionnaire consisted of: Likert-type scale, multiple response, open and closed ended questions. Ethical approval was obtained from the Faculty Research Ethics Committee (FREC). Around 140 MPharm students at level 5 were invited to take part in the study and a response rate of 60% (n=84/140) was achieved. The completed questionnaires were coded and analysed using the IBM SPSS Statistics Data Editor. Over a third of students identified themselves as visual learners as, this gave an encouraging insight as to how beneficial the students might perceive the educational videos. 75% of the students have watched the videos with 64% of them have watched the videos at their own time. Students have rated videos that demonstrate complicated techniques such as granulation techniques as very useful while simple techniques such as sample dilutions and use of pipettes scored a lower rate (Figure 1). Over 80% of the students have felt that the laboratory videos motivated them, increased their engagement and boosted their confidence.