Explainer Videos: scalable, inclusive, and metacognitive assessment for remote and in-person teaching

We present a novel approach for student assessment in large physics lecture courses on student-recorded videos. Students record 5-minute videos teaching how to solve a problem to other students and are partially graded based on peer reviews from other students. After piloting this method during COVID-19 remote teaching over the last year and a half, we have found encouraging indications that it (1) promotes student self-efficacy and metacognition, (2) builds in a deeper engagement with the material, (3) encourages student creativity, (4) develops technical and critical communication ability, and (5) avoids long-standing issues with digital plagiarism. Though the method was developed during pandemic teaching, we propose that aspects can be readily applied to in-person teaching and scales with class size. We comment on the potential to support diverse student retention in physics and outline potential pedagogical trade-offs of this method.