Abstract:

The research proves that the use of educational videos has the potential to support students’ learning [e.g., 1] and confirms that teachers are enthusiastic in using YouTube videos and it is useful for teaching at any level [e.g., 2]. We can find many videos addressing the same mathematical concept in different ways and targeting the same learning group. Then users need to take a decision of choosing the best one for their requirements. What are the criteria teachers should consider in making a decision to choose a learning video to integrate into the mathematics lessons? This is the question that we seek to provide answers from this paper.

Among the different types of educational videos, we purposely chose to consider learning videos (LV) of mathematics in this study. At the beginning of the project, we aimed to create a catalogue with quality criteria to create and to choose a LV [3]. Then we understood that having two catalogues instead one will cater the issue most. Thus, we designed two catalogues: i) quality criteria to create learning videos and ii) quality criteria to choose a learning video. In this paper, we present the later which was designed to help teachers in choosing a good learning video that is fulfilling their teaching-learning goals, matches with the learning situation and is appropriate for the learning group. The catalogue comprised with a set of quality criteria under five categories: relevance of the objectives and the content of the video to the chosen lesson; accuracy and the logical structure of the content; appropriateness of the mathematical language and terminology; appropriateness of the didactical-conceptual and methodological preparation of the video and the technical consideration (easy to play without any technical issue). In this paper we will discuss how we designed this catalogue and why we suggest these criteria are essential to choose a good learning video. Further, the paper will also address the influence of the didactical triangle in choosing these criteria.

Design-based research (DBR) method with three cycles is used as the methodology in data collection. Teacher-students and mathematics education researchers of the Technical University of Darmstadt and of the University of Catania are involved in the first two cycles. This is an ongoing project and currently, we are in the second iteration. Thus the paper presents the second modification of the quality criteria and how teachers are expected to use this catalogue.

References:
[1] T. Jones, & K. Cuthrel, “YouTube: Educational potentials and pitfalls,” Computers in the Schools,” vol. 28, pp. 75-85, 2011.
[2] E. Szeto, & A. Y. Cheng, “Exploring the usage of ICT and YouTube for teaching: A study of pre-service teachers in Hong Kong,” The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, vol. 23. Issue 1, pp. 53-59, 2014.
[3] I. Ratnayake, R. Bruder, F. Johlke & N. Feldt-Caesar “Designing challenging online mathematical tasks for initial teacher education: Motivational considerations,” Proceedings of the 43rd Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, vol. 2, pp. 240-247, 2019.

Keywords:

Quality Criteria, Learning Videos, Learning Situations.