The Impact of YouTube Videos on the
Student’s Learning
Yousra Chtouki1, 2, Hamid Harroud1
1Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane
P.O Box 104, Ave Hassan II
Ifrane 53000, Morocco
{y.chtouki, h.harroud}@aui.ma
Abstract— An important part of education is student’s
learning. Good quality education is based mainly on how well
student attain the knowledge. One way to achieve that is to
simplify the content and make it as intuitive as possible. This can
be challenging especially for introductory computer science
courses for non-computer science students. Such courses are
supposed to cover a wide range of complex computer concepts
such as networking, computer internal hardware, databases,
operating systems and others.
In this paper we are presenting the results of a study done on
the use of YouTube videos to enhance students’ learning. We
have evaluated the student’s performance in an introduction to
computers course for non-computer science students by
comparing two groups of students, The first one is a test group in
which we have supplied the students with a set of videos from
YouTube to illustrate different concepts such as multiple core
versus single core processor, hard disk internal components,
using fiber optic cables to connect continents under water..ect.
The second is a control group in which we have only used the
traditional resources, such as the textbook, in class lectures and
handouts. The results of the study have shown that students
understand and can remember the complex concepts much better
when they are exposed to a visual explanation video. We found
that most of the students if not all watched the short videos,
which is not the case with textual content. One of the main
advantages of YouTube is that it is a free web based service that
contains short contents about specific concepts taught in schools.
Educators can easily search and review videos related to a
specific concept or knowledge, and then provide the students
with the link. In our case the videos were downloaded using
RealPlayer plugin, which allowed us to download any video
streaming content on the web. Then we have uploaded the videos
in our LMS (learning management system). We have opted to
include the videos in the LMS so that we can track the number of
students who have downloaded the videos and keep track of the
number of downloads. In this study we have found that using
YouTube videos encouraged students to look for similar videos,
and get a habit of using YouTube as an educational resource. The
only challenge is the evaluation of the reliability of the content,
for that reason content selection has to done by the instructor.
Manuscript received June 1st, 2012.
(e-mail: y.chtouki@aui.ma).
978-1-4673-2334-5/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
Mohammed khalidi2 Samir Bennani2
2RIME Laboratory,
2Ecole Mohammadia d’Ingénieurs
Ave Ibn Sina, Rabat, Morocco
{s.bennani, m.khalidi}@emi.ac.ma
Lastly, YouTube videos have been a useful source of educational
content, it is a free web based tool, and the impact has been
important based on our study on students’ performance.
Educators have used YouTube videos in other fields such as
nursing in [1] and have proven to be an effective tool to enhance
students learning and engagement.
Index Terms— Blended Learning, E-learning, Web Services,
YouTube Videos.
I. INTRODUCTION
I n Education the aim is always to ensure that students attain
the intended learning objectives. According to the national
committee of inquiry into higher education, the aim of higher
education should be to sustain a learning society. Two of the
four main purposes which make up this aim as mentioned in
[2] are: 1.to inspire and enable individuals to develop their
capabilities to the highest potential levels throughout life, so
that they grow intellectually, are well equipped for work, can
contribute effectively to society and achieve personal
fulfillment. 2. To increase knowledge and understanding for
their own sake and to foster their application to the benefit of
the economy and society. One way to achieve that is to make
the students interested in the subject regardless of the
techniques used in or outside the classroom. Once the student
is interested and sees a direct benefit from learning a given
topic, then learning becomes intuitive and an enjoyable
experience.
In blended learning environments, both classical and new
electronic methods are used in teaching. Several studies were
done in health care education [1][5] shows that Web 2.0 in
general and YouTube videos specifically are effective in
education. Web 2.0 applications, such as the popular YouTube
online video network, may enhance health care students'
learning and retention while providing connections with peers
and faculty [5]. As social media, which combines user-
generated contents and social networking features, has become
a major source of information dissemination and social
sharing [6]. According to YouTube 48 hours of video are
uploaded every minute, resulting in nearly 8 years of content
uploaded every day [7]. Therefore YouTube can be a valuable
source of information from which we can extract useful
learning content.
In our case the introduction to computers course is thought in
the classroom the classical way. There is also a learning
management system ‘LMS’ where we make use of content
delivery, assessment and collaboration tools. This paper is
presenting the results of a study done to evaluate the impact of
YouTube videos on the students’ performance.

Ongoing monitoring and frequent evaluations of the

student's performance are necessary to determine if the student
is making progress [3]. The students’ performance is evaluated
in terms of their understanding of the concepts and their
applications. The term evaluation means to examine, judge,
appraise, and assign value or worth. The word performance
refers to the actions of carrying out or completing some
function, role, or obligation [3]. The challenges in introductory
courses for non-major students are: The students may not be
interested with the subject taught, the concepts may be
difficult to grasp, It’s challenging to understand a complex
concept without any prior knowledge, the limitation of how
much is covered in introductory courses, and finally the time
limitation doesn’t allow the instructor to elaborate or go into
much specific detail on a given topic or concept. Again, in our
paper we are emphasizing on introductory computer science
course for non-major students. The computer related concepts
thought are software, hardware, database, networking and
programming. The course is divided into two parts, the first
part in which the first four concepts are covered and the
second which is dedicated to computer programming.
The rest of the paper is organized as follow: II.a We present
and analyze the survey results performed on a control group,
which is a group of students that has completed the
introduction to computers course the classical way. IIb & IIc
We present and analyze the survey results performed on the
test group where we used YouTube videos as an extra support
tool. III Conclusion and future work.
II. SURVEY RESULTS
Figure 1: Survey of introduction to computers students about the
usefulness of the concepts thought in class
B. The test group: using YouTube videos
The test group is the group of students taking introduction
to computers course, the same content is delivered and
students are assessed the same way as the control group. The
only added tool is the use of YouTube videos that have been
uploaded on the existing LMS for the students to watch
outside the classroom. The videos were about topics covered
in the first part of the term excluding database. This means
that the videos were about software, hardware and networking
topics. For database we have used reading material instead and
were also supplied on the LMS for students to read outside the
classroom.
First we have to see the percentage of students whom have
watched the YouTube videos. Figure2 shows that 80% of the
students have watched most, all or even looked for more
videos on YouTube. This indicates that students find it easy to
use and interesting enough to view videos related to course
content which is not the case with reading material. This
encourages us to further investigate the reminder of the survey
questions.

A. The Control group: teaching the classical way

The students in the control group were taught the classical
way in the classroom, using the typical resources, the
textbook, the handouts, in class presentations and illustrations.
Added to that, instructors also use collaboration, assessment
and content delivery tools in the existing LMS. We should
mention that the LMS contains only the resources provided in
the classroom: syllabus, lecture slides, handouts and
assignments. Figure 1 presents the survey results taken at the
end of the term.
The 1st chapters means the first part of the term which covers
application software, computer hardware, networking and
database. We noticed that a large number of students find the
first part of the term less interesting and do not find the
content to be useful.
Figure 2: Survey results to check the percentage of students whom have
watched the YouTube videos supplied by the instructor

The second item that we need to test for is the change in the
students interest in the topics covered during the first part of
the semester which are: software, hardware, networking and
database. Figure3a shows that Figure3b shows that 43% of the
students find that one of the topics covered in the first part of
the semester is the least interesting. This number is smaller
than the one in the control group. We can conclude then that
YouTube videos have helped in increasing the students’
interest in the subject.
Figues3a also shows that 29% of the students find that
database is the least interesting which the only topic for which
we didn’t supply any YouTube videos, instead we supplied
reading material. This is a high percentage, knowing that
students get to create and manipulate databases in the lab. So
the lab time was not enough to get all of the students
interested in the topic. This can mainly be because database is
such a large concept that students may not see the direct
implication of databases in their life. Especially that the
database applications covered in the lab remain fairly basic.
Figure 3a: Least interesting topic
Figure 3b: Most interesting topic
Figure3b on the other hand shows that 24% of the
students have found that the software, hardware and
networking are the most interesting. This we consider as a
remarkable change in student’s reaction towards the subject.
Especially that we have been having a difficult time to get
students interested on those topics using the textbook only.
And this has been noticed by instructors during four
continuous years of teaching the course prior to the integration
of YouTube videos. Also, confirmed by the control group
survey.
C. Evaluating students’ performance using grades:
In order to shed more light on the effectiveness of the
impact of the use of YouTube videos, we will investigate the
students’ grades on the networking concept specifically for
several reasons. One is because this has been a difficult topic
for students to understand due to its complexity and to the
time limitation in which we cover it. After teaching the course
for 12 consecutive semesters we noticed that students have a
hard time grasping different components in networking.
Concepts details such as: network architectures, topologies,
transmission media, and networking devices. We should
mention that networking is the only chapter that doesn’t have
a lab application that goes along with it. This may have
contributed to the abstraction and nontangible feel to the topic
itself. For all these reasons, we have provided the students
with a set of YouTube videos to illustrate those concepts. Also
we opted to include some real life projects such as the fiber
optic project that aims at connecting East Africa with the rest
of the world. An evaluation of the students’ performance in
networking was done in class; the results are shown in figure5.
65% of the students have a passing grade. This is a good
improvement compared with previous years where the
percentage of success reached 50% at the most.
Figure5: Students performance in networking after using YouTube videos
as an extra support tool
D. Reading Material verses YouTube Videos:
Reading is considered to be an important part of learning
and education. Reading offers a productive approach to
improving vocabulary and word power. It is advisable to
indulge in at least half an hour of reading a day to keep abreast
of the various styles of writing and new vocabulary [4].
However we notice that students are losing interest in reading.
When we use alternative teaching methods we are not only
helping the students better learn, we are also increasing their
interest in the topic taught. Subsequently, the students are
more likely to read about topics they are already interested in.
Therefore the use of technology such as YouTube videos is
not replacing reading; it is instead supporting students love
learning and thus pushes and helps students read more.
 Figure 4 shows that students find the textbook the least
useful tool to learn. This further confirms the decrease in
reading among people especially the youth.
Figure4: Evaluating the usefulness and the interest of students in using
reading material.
of possibilities and the potential for the future in terms of
technology use in education seems to be promising.
REFERENCES
[1] Janice Agazio,Kathleen M. Buckley , ‘An Untapped Resource Using
YouTube in Nursing Education’, Nurse Educator; Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 23-
28, 2009 Wolters Kluwer Health.
[2] Dearing, R 1997, Higher education in the learning society, National
Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, Leeds, viewed 28 May
2012, <http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/ncihe/>. "
[3] Allyn and Bacon adapted from Horejsi, C.R. & Garthwait, C. L.; ‘about
evaluating student performance’; The social work practicum: A guide
and workbook for students 2nd ed., pp. 210-216. Boston2002.
[4] R.Young “Professor Uses High-Tech Tools to Make Case for
Importance of Reading; The Chronicle of higher education”; March 14,
2011.
[5] Hansen, M. & Erdley, S; ‘ YouTube and Other Web 2.0 Applications for
Nursing Education’. Online Journal of Nursing Informatics (OJNI), 13
(3); October, 2009; Avail at http://ojni.org/13_3/Hansen_Erdley.pdf
[6] Qian Tang, Bin Gu, Andrew Whinston, "Content Contribution in Social
Media: The Case of YouTube," hicss, pp.4476-4485, 2012 45th Hawaii
International Conference on System Sciences, 2012C. J. K, 1995.
[7] YouTube official website; http://www.youtube.com/t/faq; 2012.
[8] Z. Wang, M. Zhao, Y. Song, S. Kumar, B. Li. “YouTubeCat: Learning
to Categorize Wild Web Videos”. IEEE Conference on Computer Vision
and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2010.

Obviously from the figure we can also see that the direct
interaction with the instructor is always the best way to pass
on the knowledge; however it must be supported by other
tools that may be used outside the classroom. Due to the
limitation of class time, the amount of information that needs
to be covered, there is always a need to make the students
continue the learning process outside the classroom.
Hopefully, technology will not only assist in enhancing
education but also help the students increase their passion for
reading and learning in general.

III. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

A fruitful and successful learning experience mandates
that students are interested in the subject and that the
knowledge is presented in an intuitive way. Due to the
decrease in students’ interest in reading, educators have to use
other methods to ensure that learning is still taking place. In
this paper we have presented the results of a study performed
on an introduction to computers course for non-major
students. The aim of every educational institution is to
increase the students productive and success rate. Therefore,
the study presented in this paper tackles one of several
existing web solutions that may enhance the learning
experience of students.
Since YouTube videos have only been used for two terms on a
total number of 150 students. For future work we intend on
continuing to perform the survey for the coming terms. We
also want to explore the possibility of automatic search and
filtering of YouTube videos and its integration in the existing
Learning management system. On-line services for archiving
and sharing personal, Automatic categorization of videos is
important for indexing and search purposes [8] such existing
research done in this area opens the doors for broader range