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Youtube as an educational tool in physics teaching

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 YOUTUBE AS AN EDUCATIONAL TOOL IN PHYSICS TEACHING

Peter GUSTAFSSON

Mälardalen University, Sweden

peter.gustafsson@mdh.se

Abstract:
A review based on literature studies and searches on YouTube gives a scheme over how
YouTube is used and also how it can be used as an educational tool in physics teaching. This
scheme gives a rather traditional picture dominated by videos of lectures and physics
demonstrations. Even though there are advantages with this for some purposes, the capacity of
interactivity connected to YouTube as a platform for communication is not used to it full
extent. Furthermore, the materials are mainly produced for use in higher secondary school and
for college teaching. Materials produced for use in preschool, primary school and lower-
secondary school are rare.
There are also examples of how YouTube is used for gathering information of physics as
subject. Here the interactivity is important. Also some innovative ideas and examples are
presented where YouTube can be a tool for, if not to reform teaching, at least to develop
teaching to a more student oriented domain.

Key words: YouTube, video, physics, teaching, innovation

1. Introduction

Over time innovations have change the settings for teaching and education through equipping
teachers with new tools. The printed book and the black, or white, board are obvious
examples and milestones in passed centuries. Also movies are among these innovations.
During the last decade the Internet has become one further tool, where the trend is that many
of us nowadays has access to the net in the pocket through smartphones, a connection that can
be useful in many ways.

Of course one can argue against these developments. In Sweden for example the minister of
education holds a position that some debaters states indicates a believe that knowledge should
be archived through the use of printed books, paper and pencils (Folcker Aschan 2012) and
that digital media only can be accessed through traditional computers and by no other means.
But many of us hold a position that the optimal learning method of each and every one is still
to be found and new pedagogical tools and methods continuously maps out new ways for
learning.

One of these new possible tools is YouTube. This website was created in February 2005 and
here users can share video clips through uploading and viewing. To be able to upload movie
clips you must be a registered user which is free of charge.

Since the uploaded clips are user produced and you as viewer can comment on the clips and
though give the producer feedback, YouTube is regarded as a social network. The viewer’s
comments can also be commented by other users.

For today’s youth, called the Net generation (Berk 2009), it is natural to use different devices
to access multimedia, as YouTube, and though they have an experience suitable for
multimodal learning. Growing up in a digital age with its easy access to the world and flow of
information also give them better possibility to learn through connectivism (Siemens 2005),
where the personnel network connects to other individuals, organizations and institutions and
provide learning to the individuals. This process is not limited to traditional learning
institutions as schools and universities but is active always and anywhere. As teachers we
have to relate to this. The future students can be assumed to be even more diverse learners
than today, envisage learning activities based on student control, responsibility and freedom.

Students frequently upload material to YouTube and use it for watching. Can we direct them
to produce and upload material in connection to courses, especially science courses as a tool
for learning?

How the use of videos can support learning, especially in introductory courses and for
introducing complex topics and also be of value for learners that are helped through visual
experiences, and enhance learning outcomes is documented (Berk 2009). Through literature
studies one can find out how teachers suggest the use of YouTube as a tool in teaching and
better still, how the teachers actually use it. The journal The Physics Teacher has a monthly
column with readers’ tips of how to use YouTube but also articles on the subject. One obvious
use is to deliver lectures (Haase 2009), but it has also a value as attention grabber, focus
concentrator and part of instructions (Berk 2009; Jones and Cuthrell 2011). Several examples
of this can be found (Riendeau 2010a; Riendeau 2011). Also for conducting data based
laboratory work in for example mechanics through video analysis are reported (Riendeau
2010b; Ruiz 2009).
Of importance in education, especially when using YouTube for producing videos, is the
possibility to that describe physics concepts and laws in contexts, particularly everyday
context. The importance of contexts for recalling and learning was early established (Godden
and Babbeley 1975). For studies in physics the value of context has also been found. It has to
be familiar and relevant for the student, to understand the tasks. Tasks with a context is also
found to be more tempting to solve but a context suitable for one student is not necessarily of
interest for others (Park and Lee 2004; Rennie and Parker 1993; Rennie and Parker 1996;
Whitelegg and Parry 1999) and though a variation of context in the presentation is necessary.

Of interest is also to study if the ongoing discussion of physics as a male domain is reflected
in YouTube videos and in this aspect how choice of context for physics related activities,
which have an important role for making the subject valid for women (McCullough 2011;
Rennie and Parker 1993; Rennie and Parker 1998; Staberg 1994), is used. Has this had an
effect on physics related video clips so they not only demonstrate gender neutrality but gender
inclusion, with men and women acting as equal in the videos?

2. Research question

The ambition of this paper is to conduct a preliminary study to get information of what
material is uploaded to YouTube and how this indicate the use of the website for teaching
physics in any school form. Out from this background the following research questions are
formulated: What types of physics education related YouTube clips can be found? What kind
of usage of them can be anticipated for teaching? What teaching methods do they represent?
Out from these questions the representation of gender and context will also be studied.

3. Methodology

The search engine at the website YouTube has been used to gather video clips to study. All
searches and collecting of data were performed during February 2012.

Some limits have to be made for the search. For this three different investigations been
conducted. In one investigation the ambition was to map out four different areas within
classical physics to see how they are presented in YouTube clips. The selected concepts for
the search were: physics + mechanics, physics + thermodynamics, physics +
electromagnetism and physics + waves. Even though mechanics, thermodynamics,
electromagnetism and waves constitutes fundamental areas in classical physics and in that
sense are valid as concept to search on, they also can be valid in everyday contexts that
includes phenomena that not easily relates to a subject discus of physics. Therefore a lot of
video clips, irrelevant for this study, were presented as a result for such an open search. To
focus the result list the word “physics” was also added in the search string.

To see how the choice of language affects the results, that is to see if there is an Anglo-
American bias, the German and also the Swedish/Danish (the words are identical in these two
languages) translation of physics + mechanics were used for comparison.

In a second investigation the search words were physics + projects with the idea that this
would result in video clips presenting student produced projects. In the third investigation the
ambition was to find relevant materials for preschools. The search words were first physics +
preschool but resulted in so few hits, only 163, that it was changed to science + preschool.

As a search results you get a lot of hits for some of the searches enquiries. In YouTube you
can apply filters that will limit your search and you can also sort the results. In this
investigation the search has been limited to videos but all the other categories have been open.
In the first investigation the combination of physics + mechanics resulted in over 24 000 hits,
the highest number in the whole study. In the first investigation the lowest number of hits
were for physics + electromagnetism with 2 200 hits.

The second investigation with physics + projects as search word resulted in nearly 5 000 hits.
However, the investigation on science + preschool only resulted in nearly 1 900 hits, but was
well over the original 163 hits for the search combination of physics + preschool.

To investigate 24 000 video clips or even 1 900, the lowest hit result, is not viable. A selection
has to be done. A grading or rating of the hits is always done for the result presented on
YouTube. For these investigations relevance has been used in favor to published date and
numbers of displays, since none of the two later have no apparent meaning for this study.
However one cannot track how the algorithm for sorting by relevance is functioning. From
March 2012 ranking is also added as a sorting parameter for YouTube but since all data
collection already was done then, it has not been used.

The top ten results for each search was decided to be taken as a sample for further
investigation, in total 80 videos, where of 60 videos for physics combined the traditional
physics areas, the first investigation. Thus 10 videos each were used for the two other
investigations.

Through watching all video clips and taking notes to describe the content, categories were
identified for systematization of the content of the videos. For the first investigation settings
for the recording appeared as a main category with underlying categories such as live lecture,
studio recording of a lecture with no audience, demonstration and others. Also gender of the
actors, type of producer (organization or private) and the length of the clips were noted. See
table 1 for further information of these categories.

For the investigation on physics + projects and science + preschool respectively the ten top
hits were also studied and the same categories as in the first investigation used for further
analysis. In this case the category demonstration includes presentations of projects. For all
videos, the viewer can write comments. These are to some extent read, as they give a picture
of the viewer’s opinion of the videos.

4. Results

The samples of videos found, when searching on traditional physics areas, are dominated by
film clips produced in a studio, with a teacher giving a lecture over some well-defined
concept or phenomenon on a board or as a power point presentation. There is no audience and
the film length is between three and eleven minutes.

Out of the 40 English speaking videos, 31 of them are in this category – “studio lecture”. For
the searches on thermodynamics and electromagnetism, this is the only category on the ten
highest relevant lists. For the mechanics and wave searches this category is found five and six
times respectively. The result is in line with what was found also for the 20 videos for the
German/Swedish/Danish sample. In total 17 of these were produced in studios.

For the 31 English speaking videos recorded in a studio, 22 of them are produced under a
specific producer name, a company or organization. The remaining nine can be said to be
private productions. A similar, but not so pronounced result is found for the
German/Swedish/Danish sample with five out of 17 videos produced under names of
organizations, with four different organizations.

For the mechanics and wave searches the next most frequent type of video is found; recorded
live lecture with a class of student present. Some classic American universities are found here
with Berkeley, MIT and Stanford as contributors with four videos together. The lengths of
these videos are between 38 and 70 minutes and though they are full lectures. The lectures
include the professor talking, writing on the board, showing picture and giving
demonstrations, sometime with the assistance of a student.

Video recordings of just demonstrations are found twice in the English speaking videos; a
gyro and a pendulum. The remaining three videos are categorized as others (interview,
synthesizer sound and a texted slide with a man singing in the background).

For the German/Swedish/Danish videos a similar result was found with one demonstration
video, a air track with several male and female physics teacher demonstrating movement. The
remaining two videos were categorized as other; one man sings a song about physics and one
video documenting an inventory of laboratory equipment.

The quality of all videos is of good standard. It is easy to hear the lecturer and see the writings
on the board. They present pedagogical teachers who appear to have long experience. The
viewer’s comments to the videos are nearly without exceptions very positive: “I love this,
Great lesson, I am really amazed..very basic but really good explanation..wow..”.

Of the 35 videos in the English speaking sample were live lectures or studio lectures are
presented, 30 of the lectures are given by a male teacher. The videos that present a woman as
teacher all come from the same producer. In one of these a male voice is used occasionally to
comment some of the demonstrations that are included in the video. For all 17 videos with
studio lectures in the German/Swedish/Danish sample there are only men giving the lectures.
For a summary of all results in number, see Table 1.

A χ2-test of the 60 videos in the first investigation divided in to language groups, English with
40 videos and other languages with 20 videos, and the four different subcategories under
setting, results in that language is not a statistical significant parameter on a α=0.05 level, see
Table 2. A χ2-test regarding gender representation for the language groups in the 56 videos
where gender could be identified gave the same result, no statistical significant, see Table 3.
This indicates that language is no parameter affecting the video content in the investigated
sample.

For the investigation of projects, the resulted videos all showed student projects, conducted in
what seemed to be upper high school or college. The projects are all relevant physics project
presented with care and seriousness of the students. Three were presentations by women and
 Investiga- Search Catego- Setting Gender Producer
tion: words: ries:

Sub- Live Studio Demo Other Male Female Mixed Organiza Private
categories: lecture lecture -tion

Physics+ 3 5 1 1 9 9
mechanics
Physics+
First, 10 9 1 8 2
minutes and 7:40 minutes.

Thermody-
four namics
physics
areas Physic+
electro- 10 6 4 10
magnetism
Physics+
1 6 1 2 6 1 6 3
waves

First, Physics+
German mechanics 9 1 9 1 3 7
(German)

First, Physics+
Danish/ mechanics
8 2 9 1 2 6
Swedish (Danish/
Swedish)

Second Physics+
projects 10 6 3 1 10

Third Science+
5 5 1 8 5 5
preschool
six by men and one by mixed genders. The time lengths of the videos were between 1:40

Table 1. Summary of the results for the three main investigations are presented. On top (the table turned) the
different generated categories are given. The number gives observed occurrence within each set of ten videos.
Setting English German/Swedish/Danish
Live 4 0
Studio 31 17
Demo 2 1
Other 3 2

χ2-test 0.53

Table 2. The χ2-test of the 60 videos in two language groups with respect to setting.

Gender English German/Swedish/Danish

Male 30 18
Female 5 0
Mixed 1 2

χ2-test 0.13

Table 3. The χ2-test of the 56 videos where gender could be identified, divided in two language groups.

The sample from the investigation for preschool videos contained five commercial videos
promoting different preschool organizations and one dvd with learning materials with no
direct connection to science besides that this is one activity among other in the presentation.
One of the remaining five video clips presents mathematical exercises with numbers and the
other four videos present science related activities such as plants, producing carbon dioxide
from common house hold items and activities with play dough. They have a length of 70
seconds up to nearly 6 ½ minutes and in all but one of the commercials, women are present or
speaking. In one of the commercial videos however there is a man together with children.

5. Discussion

Several interesting observation can be made from the collected material. For example, it is
noted for the first investigation, conducted with the search word physics and one of four
physics areas, that there is no indication of a language bias comparing setting for the video or
gender representation between English and German/Swedish/Danish. These videos are
dominated by men presenting physics in a studio setting. When adding live lectures we find
that in 52 of in total 60 video clips, or 87 %, physics is presented in the form of a lecture, for
an audience present or one watching the video.

The content of the lectures and the age of the students in the live lectures indicate that the
target groups for the videos are upper secondary school, college and introduction level in
university. This gives a rather narrow age span for the expected viewers. Of course the
selected search word can be seen as contributing to this, since the different areas in physics
are presented and elaborated at this education level in most school systems.

The picture that these videos gives of physics as a subject is very traditional in that sense that
they display how physics commonly are thought throughout the world, as a collection of
concepts and laws, presented on a board. Even if the live lectures also include demonstrations
and some real life examples, there is still an indoor, basically theoretical experience for the
students. That the videos reproduce how physics generally is taught is perhaps not surprising.

It is also once again here demonstrated that physics is a male domain with only a few women
involved in the presentations. The videos with female lectures all came from the same
organization and we can anticipate a conscious choice of gender for the presentation. If some
producers show awareness and can make such decisions regarding gender, it is a bit amazing
that no example is found where physics concepts and ideas are presented and demonstrated in
more innovative ways when using video as media. Why not act outdoors and in real life
contexts?

Even if the viewer’s comments are positive or even very positive, we must remember that
these comments are posted by viewers that have found what they probably are looking for:
explanations and presentations of unsolved question regarding physics concepts. A
counterpart to this positive picture of traditional physics education is given by Slisko and
Dykstra Jr. (Slisko and Dykstra Jr. 2011). They report on a YouTube clip illustrating a
practical solution of a textbook problem that is thought to be fun. The video though show how
bizarre the problem is and it has had nearly a half a million views until May 2012, with
comments such as: “I knew there was a reason why I hated physics!!!” and “LOL wonderful!
God, I hate physics”. This attitude is also manifested as a more general attitude towards
science studies (Osborne et al. 2003), with a low interest to study science. This is especially
valid for women in European countries and Japan (Sjöberg and Schreiner 2010).

Part of an explanation for this is in line with what is seen in this study, with the reported male
dominance among the lectures, that physics is not a subject or area for career’s including or
involving women. This is also in line with earlier findings (Benckert and Staberg 2001;
Staberg 1994; Tobias 1990). For a person who has to enter a new knowledge field, two
processes starts. One is acquisition of knowledge, the other participation in a knowledge
community (Sfard 1998). If the community, more or less consciously, present the knowledge
as intellectually complicated and hard to conquer and the community is dominated by one
gender as physics is, and competitive, there can be a reluctance to participate, especially for
women (Carlone 2004).

Therefore it is regrettable that no more innovative material is found among the high relevant
videos. Here is a possibility to produce and present physics in real life context with both
genders as participators on equal terms. Berk (Berk 2009) presents a list of 20 potential
learning outcomes for using videos in the classroom. Even if this list can be seen as criteria
for using and selecting videos for teaching, it can also be regarded as a list of objectives when
producing a video. Such objectives can be attention grabbing and generating interest, foster
creativity and flow of ideas, inspire, motivate and making learning fun.

It can be a resource for other activities also, well in line with Berks list of learning outcomes.
Jones and Cuthrell (Jones and Cuthrell 2011) suggest reference videos in connection with
elementary instructions and as spring boards for classrooms activities. To find appropriate
videos for this within the subject of physics, it is obvious that other search words have to be
used than those used in this investigation.

The example from Slisko and Dykstra Jr. (Slisko and Dykstra Jr. 2011) also demonstrate the
possibility for using YouTube for evaluation. Why not put in system to let the student post
comments at the YouTube platform for videos that you use in teaching?
It is demonstrated how to use easy accessed YouTube videos for computer based laboratory
work (Riendeau 2010b; Ruiz 2009). Here it is possible to actively select materials that
estrange from the traditional and male dominated picture of physics.

Such an opposing picture appears when going to the second investigation: physics projects.
Even if the physics presented here still is in age and content related to senior high school and
college, it is active in showing building projects and demonstrations. There are also more
women participating. Even if this can be a result of mandatory courses for both genders, it
demonstrates willingness among women to also upload their videos.

This kind of videos could be used by teachers to inspire pupils and students before starting
with project. They can give ideas of project, how to realize them and how to present them.
Not necessarily coping what they see, but to develop or avoid (everything is not good) or just
as eye opener.

An interesting, but not unexpected, gender shift is obvious when going over to the third
investigation, science and preschool. Here the women are in clear majority, as among the
preschool teachers themself. There is also a more apparent commercial part of videos here.
Half of the studied videos show preschool activities while the rest are advertisement related to
the preschool. It indicates a market here: presenting and selling instructional material for
doing science in preschool. If this is the case it sends a signal to preschool teacher educator. It
might be a good idea to revise the curriculum regarding science, and technology, content. An
extension of these subjects appears to be needed.

6. Conclusions

When searching on traditional physical concepts on YouTube you will get a traditional picture
of physics education for high school and college and also for science in preschool. This is
perhaps not such a surprising finding but still a bit disappointing, despite that the lectures
found on YouTube are of good pedagogical standard and appreciated by the viewers. Even if
movies and videos have been around for years and internet have open for new social media,
the use of these as pedagogical tools have not meant a change in teaching of physics as
displayed in the reviewed videos. With a sensible choice of videos, or production of own
videos, the teacher can probably help to diminish the view of physics as a dull and
uninteresting subject and hopefully influence the gender identity for the subject not to be so
male dominated in the future.

Videos can also be used for the teachers. A search on YouTube with the word “physics lesson
planning” gives several interesting results as example. There is also a possibility that teachers
use YouTube as suggested by for example Berk (Berk 2009) and Jones and Cuthrell (Jones
and Cuthrell 2011) as pedagogical element in teaching. A review as in this report cannot
reveal that.

However, for displaying student works and for active use in teaching, there are great
possibilities for a prepared and interested teacher. The second investigation demonstrate that
if the student themselves produces material multiple skills can be involved; physics
knowledge, planning and conducting projects, working in teams and technical control in
making and uploading the videos. No gender barrier should affect this.
For preschool perhaps not more videos for the young children is what is needed but
inspiration and knowledge for preschool teacher to include science among the daily activities
for the children. Here can channels as YouTube, with more genuine uploaded clips be one
source among others to inspire.

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