Teaching Passive House Construction: Video vs Graphic - Which One Achieves Higher Assessment?

The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES) mandates a new nationwide energy code.Passive house construction is likely to be a requirement of the new code.Passive houses are built using the following five concepts: super insulation, airtight construction, triple glazing, mainly passive heating (passive solar, building inhabitants, electrical equipment) and a heat exchanger that balances fresh air.In order to give examples of this type of construction in the classroom, instructors employ either a video or labeled diagram.Two freshman Materials and Methods of Construction classes, each with 24 students, were used to test these two visual learning methods.Both media sources contained the five un-numbered passive housing concepts listed above.One group was given a stationary, hand held, diagram of a section through a passive house from the New York Times, and the other group shown a YouTube video documenting a passive house under construction.Each group was allowed equal time to view the material, and immediately asked to list the five passive house concepts.The test results support existing studies that show 65% of students to be 'visual learners,'[1] and that graphics with text provide a more effective means of introducing a new topic than video.[2