My Educational Diatribe

So about a month ago I posted a majority of my Gen Chem screencasts onto video.google.com.
There ~75 of them up there, covering about 60 % of the total material for Gen Chem I and II. As of this, they had been viewed a total of 4300 times and downloaded a total of 360 times. Few of those are my students, since they usually watch the flash versions.

Those are impressive numbers considering I have not really advertised them at all. That is pretty cool, actually.

So I was sent this small article about a group of students who are testing the use of video iPods as a suppliment to the lecture material.

The MSU iPod project

What I do not understand is why they need a test case. The student are still expected to come to lecture. How could the videos NOT help them? It seems like a silly research project. Giving the student more resources will always help. Always, right?