When learning material involves unfamiliar terminology or techniques, it is important for a student to see or hear the terms and methods applied through a number of different presentations. Just reading the terms ‘instantaneous velocity’ once, in a single sentence or problem, isn’t enough to drive a new concept home.
How great would it be for a student who reads the words 'angular momentum' to quickly access a video where s/he hears the same terms used in other examples and settings.
At Electric Book, we supplement text-based review materials with streamlined tools that allow students to not only search for terms through the booklet, but also apply queries against transcripts of some of the best Open CourseWare videos available.
And now, we are announcing our most ambitious Electric Booklet project.
Our University Physics booklet combines the outstanding text published by OpenStax, University Physics, Volume 1, with 170 videos from MIT’s Open CourseWare project Classical Mechanics. The result is a physics review booklet which provides a one stop site where a student can view quality example problems in text and graphics, AND search the transcripts of curated videos to find audio segments from the MIT site. Both the textbook and the videos are published under a creative commons license.
When a student searches for terms throughout the suite of videos (we calls these ‘Study Suites’), only the MIT video transcripts are searched, reducing the amount of time otherwise wasted on unsatisfactory search results.
This innovative combination of best-of-breed textbooks with integrated search of selected videos allows students to quickly see (and hear) how complex terms or methods are used in multiple presentations – be they text-base example problems or on-line lecture presentations. These varied perspectives of a subject give students a leg up on mastering difficult material when compared to the use of traditional publications and e-learning sites.
The ‘University Physics’ study suite, combining University Physics – Volume 1 text and MIT Open CourseWare video, is just one example of how other colleges, universities, and companies can leverage their video content by working with Electric Book to provide study suites for their students or employees.
See this illustration for an example of how video search is connected to our University Physics booklet. You can reach the starting point for the demo at our Bookshelf.
If your school or organization is trying to find new channels to leverage your investment in quality video content, contact Electric Book to explore the possibility of building a custom study suite for your students.