Using Short Videos to Teach about the Asian Monsoon

The Asian monsoon is one of the strongest climatic phenomena on Earth and its development is closely linked to the building of mountains in central Asia, as well as the Himalayas during the Cenozoic. Water and soil brought by rivers fed by the monsoon is also responsible for supporting the ancient civilizations and modern high population density in south and eastern Asia. It is the classic example of how the solid Earth and atmosphere interact with one another. Such processes presumably existed in older mountain building events. Despite this importance most introductory geoscience textbooks aimed at undergraduate students barely mention the monsoon. In an effort to remedy this gap, we have developed a series of four short films on the topic of the Asian monsoon, with a fifth on the North American monsoon in order to improve learning outcomes for undergraduates; these are posted on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEuuRSi_LlI&list=PLzpHDPjNs-iH28vMA4khZnZeTeGV4a-kP. The videos provide an overview, examine when the Asian Monsoon started, explain how the monsoon feeds the great rivers of Asia, and explores how the waxing and waning of the monsoon affected ancient peoples across the region. A fifth video explains the N. American Monsoon. We focus on key concepts needed for students and the public to understand when, how and why the monsoon developed into the system that we know today and reflect on how it may change in the future. The short films span 5-7 minutes and look at both the atmospheric sciences, the interactions with the solid Earth, the relationship with large rivers of the region, as well as impacts on humans. These films will be shown to undergraduate classes and testing will be carried out to understand how much they know about the monsoon before and after the screenings. Our hypothesis is that students may learn more effectively through these short, high impact films than through many traditional forms of instruction and that these videos may encourage textbook authors to include more information about the monsoon in future textbooks.