Professional science education videos improve student performance in nonmajor and intermediate biology laboratory courses.

Undergraduate biology laboratories emphasize hands-on skills. Typically, descriptions of manual techniques are delivered via written instruction. Custom-produced prelab instructional videos, which augment prelab instruction, have come into wider use in recent years. However, institutional and economic barriers can interfere with video production at all colleges and universities. In such cases, professionally produced laboratory instructional videos provide an attractive alternative. We hypothesized that students who watch short, professionally produced instructional videos before performing a laboratory would feel more confident and achieve greater learning gains than students whose prelab instruction was limited to handouts. For this proof of concept study, we investigated the value added when students watched a brief video, twice per lab, in an intermediate molecular biology course at a small, liberal arts university, and in a nonmajors biology course at a large, public research university. Both video and nonvideo comparison groups were administered a pre- and postlab exams. A postlab self-efficacy survey was also administered to video groups. Our results reveal that in three out of the four laboratory classes, students who watched professional instruction videos performed significantly better in both pre- and postlab exams. For these students, we observed up to a two-fold increase in test scores on scientific concepts and techniques. For all classes, most of the video group students reported that the video contributed to their confidence, comprehension of concepts, and understanding of how to conduct the lab. We conclude that professional instructional videos may address production barriers and have the potential to effectively enhance undergraduate science curricula and significantly improve students' performance.