This presentation will outline the development and implementation of an educational strategy based on YouTube to engage students within my own institution with contextualised chemistry, as well as reaching out to and engaging a much broader, highly diverse global community of potential learners.This started as a personal instructor-led project (iTube) to present highly contextualised chemistry, engage interest with the science, and explain the relevance of it to everyday life. This was initially done to benefit students in my own institution, but the shared nature of YouTube soon meant that these videos were being used worldwide, and speaking direct to audiences about the chemical nature of the world around them. The local and global impacts of this approach will be presented based on student surveys and international YouTube engagement statistics.I then wanted my students to evolve from being passive consumers of video content to having the opportunity to actively make their own (YouTube). Students were given the option to do this as part of a module on polymer science, and as a result made videos that are personal, informative, creative and entertaining. We will reflect on the educational impact of this approach in comparison to writing traditional 'magazine-style' articles on similar topics, and using YouTube engagement statistics will demonstrate that the students also become global educators in their own right - with their videos reaching out to their own audiences.Finally, we will reflect on the way YouTube empowers its audience with a voice, allowing them to enter into a dialogue with video-makers and with each other. This enables the development of a spontaneous online community (WeTube). The oral presentation will include a comprehensive overview of the project, and will be enlivened by video excerpts and personal reflections on the successes and failures of the project.

iTube, YouTube, WeTube: Social media videos in education and outreach

248th National Meeting (2014)

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