Abstract:

The study presented in this paper was conducted with the purpose of understanding the online video consumption routines of teenagers and to access the acceptance of the introduction of educational informal videos, namely about science topics, on those routines.

Nowadays teenagers start using technologies since young age and in particular watching online videos on their mobile devices [1&2], above all music and comedy videos [3&4].

Educational videos don’t play a relevant role in their consumption habits. Nevertheless, it is important to take the opportunity that video mass consumption may offer in order to explore informal educational content through videos.

In order to understand the representations of teenagers of the desirable characteristics of online videos two focus groups were arranged. The first one with 12 participants and the second one with 4 with equal numbers of male and female. All of them were aged from 12 to 16 years old, attended public Portuguese schools and had regular access to the Internet and personal devices.

Each session was divided in two parts: the first consisted on watching a set of educational online videos followed by the response to a questionnaire; the second part consisted on a group discussion about the videos watched previously. The discussion also tried to understand the participants’ preferences and routines of online video consumption.

The data obtained from the questionnaire was exposed to a descriptive statistics analysis and the transcripts of the discussions were content analyzed. Both data was triangulated in order to address some conclusions.

The participants inquired in the two sessions reported watching online videos with different profiles: 43,8% watch less than an hour, 25% watch more than five hours daily, 18,8% watch between 1 and 2 hours and the other 12,5% watch 3 to 4 hours daily.

Almost all the participants consider that they not only learn new things, but also learn in a more comprehensive way when watching online videos.

According to the majority of participants, the videos should be short, with fast rhythm and with infographics. If there is a presenter, his speech should not be too fast and his style should be comic. The majority of the first session participants stated having no interest in comic informal videos about science topics, but the participants of the second session reported to have interest in integrating it in their routines of online video consumption.

These conclusions will be the starting point for the development and production of original science videos suitable for publication and dissemination in the online platforms used by the teenagers.

This study is a part of a broader one (a doctoral program project) whose main goal is to synthetize guidelines for educators and producers of non formal educational videos that pretend to create and publish this type of educational content.

References:
[1] Deloitte Development. (2015). Millennials and the Mainstreaming of Digital. http://bit.ly/2aTAt5S
[2] Ericsson ConsumerLab. (2015). Tv and Media 2015. http://bit.ly/1JPDDkj
[3]Statista. (2015a). Most popular YouTube video categories based on female Millennial user engagement as of December 2013. http://bit.ly/1STPvMW
[4]Statista. (2015b). Most popular YouTube video categories based on male Millennial user engagement as of December 2013. Obtido 27 de Abril de 2016, de http://bit.ly/1VVBFKQ

Keywords:

Online Video, Non-formal education, Educational Videos.