Recent research points out that 47% of students use YouTube to supplement instruction, and 72% of the students believe the YouTube videos they watch to be accurate and academically professional. Local discussions with undergraduates suggest that these numbers may be grossly underestimated. Other research praises the accessibility and engagement of YouTube videos as viable teaching tools. Frequent student use and instructor recommendations to use YouTube videos warrant an evaluation of the instructional quality of the videos students are using to supplement instruction. Over multiple years, the Yezierski Research Group characterized frequently viewed YouTube videos associated with general chemistry concepts. With topic-specific chemistry keywords, duration, and number of views as sampling criteria for video selection, carefully composed research teams coded videos according to schemes developed from Johnstone’s levels of chemistry representations (undergraduates), Richard Mayer’s multimedia principles (undergraduates), and accurate chemical concepts (doctoral students and the professor). Teams developed and revised code descriptions and negotiated the code applications when interrater agreement was low. Results indicate that popular videos on intermolecular forces, bonding, and acid-base chemistry are not aligned with principles and practices informed by chemistry education research and other related fields of study aimed at improving teaching and learning. In addition to results that describe the characteristics of the video samples on various topics, implications for researchers, video developers, and instructors will be presented.

Learning chemistry from YouTube? Evaluating multimedia principles, content accuracy, and representational levels

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.