EDU6215- Multimedia in the Classroom

Teaching High School Physiology Using a Popular TV Medical Drama. Alvarado, Marissa, April Cordero Maskiewicz. The American Biology Teacher. Vol. 73, No. 6 .August 2011. 322-328


This article focused on can students' knowledge be improved through multimedia in the classroom. For this study, they viewed a biology class in high school in a low-socioeconomic area. Since this is a biology class, the multimedia they used was the TV show House. By integrating this show, the hope is that students would understand the physiology of the human body.

Such a high percentage of people watch TV that this is the way people get the most information about health issues. The CDC partnered with Hollywood to help ensure that accurate facts about medical conditions are being used in the media. Using TV and movies in classrooms is not anything this is new. However, not many studies have been done focusing on science classes.

When it comes to using integrated media in learning physiology, there should be a plan to schedule interruptions where the teacher and students can interact. The reason the show House was chosen is because it provides relatively accurate scientific scenarios, frequent animations of what is happening inside the body, and students are familiar with it already.

The study was done over a school year with students ages 15-19. A unit began with a pretest and then the unit was taught as usual. Two classes used House as supplements while one class did not. Then all classes were given a posttest. Students who viewed House during their class showed a higher learning rate from pretest to posttest than students who did not view House.

The article says that using multimedia like this in the classroom is something that will continue to peak student interest. It says that teachers should continue to find ways to incorporate it into their lessons as much as possible.

Personally I think this is a great idea. I have watched every episode of House so I was really able to think about what the show is like and how it would relate to a high school biology class. I agreed with the points of using this particular show and the strong reasoning for it. There are so many films for all classes that can be used as a supplement to material. It is equally as important to have strong questioning techniques along with the film. If there is no discussion or questioning about the video then it does not do any good to use multimedia in this way.