STEM students' voluntary use of YouTube to learn science topics taught in high school and/or college

Abstract

Use of YouTube videos by STEM instructors is common. Many instructors suggest those videos to their students and sometimes require them to watch. However, little is known about students' voluntary use of YouTube videos to learn topics taught in their high school and/or college science courses. In this study, we surveyed 596 undergraduate, US college students of different majors, who took physics laboratory courses of different levels. Our findings are that many students do consult YouTube videos to learn about the physics topics they encounter in the classroom. We also found that this practice was much more prevalent amongst college students than amongst high school students. Further analysis of the data revealed some of the key reasons behind students' tendency towards and against voluntary use of YouTube videos to learn those topics.