JoVE in Action is a series of blog posts highlighting how STEM educators worldwide have used JoVE to support their teaching efforts. We hope these stories will be helpful for instructors looking for effective ways to deliver their science and lab courses online or in hybrid formats.
Dr. Sahar A. El-Shatoury is a professor of Microbiology in the Botany & Microbiology Department at the Suez Canal University, Egypt. Her field of research and teaching focuses on environmental microbiology. She learned about JoVE through the Egyptian Knowledge Bank and decided to use it in her courses. The Egyptian Knowledge Bank and JoVE partnership enable access to JoVE’s library of over 15,000 videos of laboratory methods and science concepts on various subjects, including biology, chemistry, medicine, and engineering. Find out more here.
JoVE videos help improve students' understanding of lab experiments
Despite providing extensive pre-lab instructions and demonstrating the experiment setup, Dr. Sahar’s students failed to grasp the experiment's idea. She says, “My students receive extensive pre-lab instructions and a demonstration of the experiment set-up. However, many students still fail to grasp the experiment's idea, connect concepts to procedures, and, most crucially, set up the equipment and conduct the experiment. JoVE solves these difficulties attractively.” She further stated, “The videos in the “Science Education” section provide both the practice and theory of scientific experiments, which is very informative for the students.”
Access to videos and other digital technologies for lab classes improves students' understanding of experiments through better visualization. When shared before class, it enables students to engage with the experiments in advance and easily complete pre-lab activities.
JoVE video-based assignments
Besides using JoVE content for teaching concepts and methods, Dr. Sahar also designed assignments involving JoVE videos. She asked the students to identify a relevant video for a chosen topic and insert the respective video link from JoVE. Dr. Sahar A. El-Shatoury explains that JoVE can be resourceful for other instructors: “When you embed JoVE in your teaching material, you will see a big difference in your students' reaction, a big change towards self-learning!”
12 out of 13 students prefer learning Microbiology with JoVE videos
One of Dr. Sahar's students says, “I can’t describe how beneficial JoVE has been for me; it helps simplify topics and research methods. I can now perform the entire experiment by watching high-quality and well-explained videos from JoVE.”
Dr. Sahar also says, “I will not only continue using JoVE for teaching but also for research. The JoVE Journal provides peer-reviewed videos indexed in PubMed and the Web of Science. This is a valuable opportunity for our researchers.”
All Egyptian citizens can now access JoVE’s library of over 15,000 videos via the Egyptian Knowledge Bank. Find out more about how to access JoVE and the additional resources available to you here.