A Faculty Learning Community for Building Sustainable Open Educational Resources: Creating a Departmental Video Tutorial Library

Abstract

Cal Poly Pomona) is a primarily undergraduate institution and part of the 23-campus California State University system. In 2013, the Mechanical Engineering Department at Cal Poly Pomona started a video tutorial library on YouTube named CPPMechEngTutorials that has grown to over 600 videos across 16 courses (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZScjkZuVuvwa-JVA3mHO3w). The video library was a collaborative effort that involved over half of the department's full-time faculty who either created videos, allowed their lectures to be recorded, or contributed ideas and feedback during the planning of videos. The videos have accumulated over 11 million views and the YouTube channel has over 100,000 subscribers as of May 1, 2022, making the video library one of Cal Poly Pomona's largest outreach efforts. Since the YouTube platform provides limited options for the organization of videos, links to the videos are organized in a user-friendly manner at a website named ME Online (www.cpp.edu/meonline). A detailed discussion of the creation of ME Online and how its videos have been used to experiment with novel pedagogies is presented in Nissenson et al. ( 2019) [1]. The authors previously conducted two studies exploring the potential impact of ME Online on mechanical engineering students at Cal Poly Pomona. Nissenson et al. ( 2019) administered a survey to 340 mechanical engineering students across sophomore, junior, and senior levels, which revealed the majority of participants watched ME Online videos at least a few times per month, 88% felt the videos have had a positive impact on their education, and 79% felt the videos improved their grades in at least one class. Fuqua et al. ( 2021) administered a survey to 110 senior level mechanical engineering students and conducted focus groups [2]. They found at least 80% of the students rated the videos as "moderately" to "very" helpful, useful, satisfying, confidence-inducing, and enjoyable. Additionally, 96% of the students provided favorable ratings about the trustworthiness of the video library, most students trusted the ME Online videos more than other videos available online, and 88% of the students reported they expect to use ME Online to study for licensing exams, graduate school, professional work, and/or just to learn new things. Students preferred videos made by known faculty members at Cal Poly Pomona rather than videos made by faculty at other institutions. 2021) also explored the potential for video libraries like ME Online to help address achievement gaps among historically disadvantaged groups. Latinx students and first-generation students used ME Online more frequently than other students, and generally rated the resource more highly than other groups. They noted the importance of being able to pause and control the pace of delivery, which is especially useful for non-native English-speaking students. The authors provided suggestions for improving video libraries such as focusing on courses that have higher failure rates, frequently reminding students about the resour...