Effectiveness of Teaching with Movies to Promote Positive Characteristics and Behaviors

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a systematic movie-based teaching course can promote positive characteristics and behaviors of Thai students. The sample of this study was 156 undergraduate students of a public university in northern Thailand. The research was conducted in two semester of the 2014 academic year. The experimental groups consisted of 41 and 44 students in the first and second semester, and the control group consisted of 35 and 36 students. Both experimental groups enrolled the “teaching-with-movie” class for credits, and viewed 11 movies during the semester. In addition, both experimental groups participated in a 30-minute discussion after viewing each movie. For the control groups, participants enrolled in social psychology course and received no intervention. Through a pretest, posttest control group quasi-experimental design, the two experimental groups showed a significant increase in positive characteristics and behaviors, while the control group showed no significant increase. In addition, results of the analysis of covariance showed that a systematic movie-based teaching course positively developed positive characteristics and behaviors, as the group variable predicted positive characteristics and behaviors at posttest while controlling for pretest scores. Overall, the results of this study provide support that positive characteristics and behaviors can be enhanced through a systematic movie-based teaching course.