‘Low-cost educational videos’ for engineering students: a new concept based on video streaming and YouTube channels

Abstract

There are many papers that present the problems of educational videos: need of a high number of resources to create them, excess of information in the majority of videos, gaps of information between videos and the rest of materials of the courses, etc. This paper introduces the concept ‘low-cost educational video’, which attempts to solve to a large extent the problems that have been identified in the educational videos. To this end, an empirical research is conducted with 487 students and various lecturers and professors in three undergraduate degrees: Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Management (in face-to-face as well as semi-distance modalities), and Aeronautical Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain). In order to achieve this goal, we introduce the process and the required resources for the creation and the diffusion of these low-cost educational videos. The results are analysed taking a literature-based questionnaire as a starting point and within the principles of good practice in higher education framework. The main research findings revealed an improved student motivation and an increase of the perceived efficiency in the learning and teaching processes, without substantially raising costs.