A Case Study Integrating Edutainment to Enhance Student Engagement and Satisfaction in an Online Graduate Psychology Course

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic created a challenge to meet course goals despite shifting to online instruction. Recent technological advances and research in pedagogy suggested techniques to enhance student engagement and learning during the pandemic. The main goal was to determine if designing online lectures through the use of advanced technology and humor impacted engagement, satisfaction, and performance. Lecture videos were designed to be highly engaging and entertaining utilizing lightboard technology, overlaid Powerpoints, and an animatronic bear. Reported watching behavior was more focused because of higher engagement, but did not translate to better course performance. While students appreciated the videos and enjoyed the humorous additions, there was not a clear advantage over a more traditional online teaching style. Considering the lack of relation to student performance, this format of videos does not seem worth the effort of creating them especially when coupled with the limited resources available for most faculty.