Abstract:

Teachers in schools and lecturers in the tertiary education institutes including the universities are using video tutorials in their courses and students also search for YouTube videos for additional support for their studies. While the use of educational videos is becoming popular, creating and uploading video tutorials to the internet is also increasing. Therefore it is crucial to check the quality of the video tutorials before they are used in the classroom teaching.

A project conducted by a group of researchers from four departments namely mathematics didactics, sports science, media didactics and multimedia communication at the Technical University of Darmstadt developed quality criteria for digital learning environments (Bruder, Grell, Konert, Rensing & Wiemeyer, 2015; Feldt-Caesar & Bruder, 2018). Following this, the current project focuses on developing quality criteria for mathematics video tutorials. Research proves that the use of video tutorials has potential to support students’ learning (e.g., Jones & Cuthrell, 2011). In designing quality criteria to choose a good video tutorial that can be embedded in a mathematics lesson, we considered the available literature based on the research done by other educators elsewhere and our own experience in research on teaching mathematics with digital technology. These criteria can be categorised into three aspects: teaching and learning goals; mathematical content and learning situations. First, we identified different goals connected with using video tutorials in different perspectives. For instance, the video creator has goals and ideas for using the video. Teachers have own goals of teaching a lesson and integrate a video tutorial and there are different learning goals for the students. All these goals need to be considered when choosing a video tutorial and should match each other. Second, the mathematical content in the video must be accurate, relevant for the curriculum and appropriate for the target group of students. The last but not the least, the video need to cater to a special didactical focus on learning situations such as introduction, motivation, exercise, reflection, summary or feedback.

Although these criteria are discussed in the domain of the mathematics we suggest that these are also relevant for other domains. Further, while these set of criteria can be used in teacher professional development programmes to support teachers to choose quality videos, the video creators can also follow them in developing video tutorials. Thus, the quality criteria could be benefited by different stakeholders.

References:
[1] Jones, T., & Cuthrell, K. (2011). YouTube: Educational potentials and pitfalls. Computers in the Schools, 28, 75-85. doi: 10.1080/07380569.2011.553149
[2] Feldt-Caesar, N. & Bruder, R. (2018). Qualitätssicherung digitaler Lernangebote am Beispiel von mathematischen Videos zum (Nach-)Lernen in einführenden Ingenieursveranstaltungen. In: Festschrift Jörg Lange (Festschrift anlässlich des 60. Geburtstages von Herrn Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jörg Lange), TU Darmstadt, Institut für Stahlbau und Werkstoffmechanik, S. 163-168.
[3] Bruder, R., Grell, P., Konert, J., Rensing, Ch., Wiemeyer, J. (2015). Qualitätsbewertung von Lehr- und Lernvideos. In N. Nistor & S. Schirlitz (Hrsg.), Digitale Medien und Interdisziplinarität. Herausforderungen, Erfahrungen, Perspektiven - Proceedings of GMW 2015 (S.295-297). Münster: Waxmann.

Keywords:

Video tutorials, quality criteria.