Abstract:

Student’s understanding and retention of knowledge requires nowadays the integration of technologies in the educational process. Macroeconomic models constitutes a basic tool for lecturers at describing the functioning of an economy, as well as to analyse the impacts of public policies in macroeconomic variables. In the case of introductory and intermediate macroeconomics, teaching is basically carried out by using concatenated graphical analyses that represent the involved markets and the dynamic processes involved in moving from one equilibrium to another. However, students of the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Seville show difficulties at understanding and retaining both graphical representations, as well as at engaging in forward-looking thinking (i.e. the concatenated changes in macroeconomic variables). A possible explanation may be found on the static nature of learning materials (basically, books and student’s notes taken during lectures). In this regard, offering dynamic videos to the students as complement material could help to improve students’ understanding and thereby, academic performance. These videos would show the graphical analyses and the processes involved, being available at public diffusion platforms such as YouTube. This paper presents the results of a questionnaire made to 165 students of introductory macroeconomics regarding their use of YouTube videos as learning material. Results show that 63% of interviewed students view YouTube videos for learning purposes, decreasing to 50% when it refers to subjects related to Economics. Nevertheless, more than 80% affirm that they would be willing to view YouTube videos to learn Macroeconomics. Additionally, students indicate that if the video is interesting and helpful, its length does not determine their willingness to view it. Finally, and regarding potential differences in students’ personal characteristics (e.g. gender, age, socio-economic factors, class assistance, motivation and previous qualifications) between different student profiles (e.g. current viewers of YouTube videos as learning material or not), no significant differences have been found.

Keywords:

Macroeconomics, learning process, YouTube videos.