Social inclusion and life satisfaction of care leavers

Didactic videos have proven to be particularly beneficial for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education challenges. This is due to their contribution to the reduction of the intrinsic cognitive load, as well as fostering connections among subjects to promote generative processing. This fact, together with the wide presence of STEM dissemination videos on YouTube, creates an opportunity both for teachers to focus on dissemination channels to acquire quality materials, and for content creators to develop specific videos aiming to serve as pedagogical aid. Aligned with such reasoning, this paper intends to evaluate the use and performance of a STEM YouTube channel that already publishes didactic videos categorized by intentionality into dissemination or educational. Using owners' data, the channel has been analyzed, considering a six-year extension period, from 2017 to 2022, and distinguishing between the two categories of contents. This dual intention of the channel allows to evaluate the educational use of dissemination channels, compared to their use for curiosity satisfaction. Through Mann-Whitney U and correlation analyses, the main channels' metrics have been analyzed in terms of awareness (i.e., impressions, views, or subscribers), use (view duration) and interaction (comments, shares, likes or dislikes). Significant differences have been found in the performance of educational and dissemination contents, such as in views (p < 0.001), average view duration (p = 0.044) and likes (p < 0.001). Additionally, video length optimization has been found as a determining parameter influencing video performance, being educational videos more sensitive to this metric than dissemination videos. This study has shown that a STEM YouTube channel of these characteristics can benefit from publishing videos aiming to a pedagogical purpose, increasing its use compared with other STEM dissemination channels only aiming to an entertainment purpose. Additionally, this study supports previous findings that video length optimization is a determinant characteristic for audience retention rate.

Currently, technological development is making its way into education through the increasing integration of new technologies into teaching. In this context, gamification emerges as one of the ways to incorporate the pedagogical process into the digital world, creating the need to encourage both the digital skills of educators and students. The objective of this work is to shed light on the growing use of technology-based teaching methods and encourage their integration into educational practice from the teacher’s point of view. This work specifically analyses the European Framework for Digital Competence of Educators, relates the different digital competences defined to a series of localized educational solutions, and proposes a direct relationship between different gamification tools and serious games. Based on the review carried out, this study highlights a profound change in the educational process that involves digitization and the use of new technologies to optimize learning, as well as the training needs of teaching staff and the development of educational solutions that take into account the different digital competences.

Full comprehension of abstract concepts present in engineering education has been usually considered challenging. Engaging multimedia resources have proven to be useful pedagogical aids to increase students’ motivation. In fact, already existing dissemination videos might be suitable to fulfill this objective. This research aims to contribute assessing video implications in the enhancement of engineering education quality through the evaluation of the current pedagogical use of a specific electrical engineering YouTube channel. To meet this objective, we characterize the use of such channel through a quantitative methodology based on a 5-point Likert scale survey (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.76). Sample data were collected from 912 respondents, evaluating users’ perception on the channel’s content and format adequacy, their preferences, and their perceptions on video integration in educational contexts. Results show (3.98 over 5) that there is currently a far-reaching educational use of the channel, and a general perception that its contents and audiovisual format are adequate for such purpose. Most users agree (4.74 over 5) that this kind of pedagogical resource could enhance education quality. As limitations, an underrepresentation of teachers in the sample could be highlighted, though student community is well represented. Overall findings suggest that the format and cognitive load in scientific dissemination YouTube channels might be perceived as suitable for pedagogical use, as means to improve education experience. This complementary use unveils the need to implement technology integration models to facilitate their pedagogical insertion, which will be addressed as future works along with more evaluations of similar dissemination channels.

This article demonstrates that didactic videos have the potential to enhance quality perception, performance and interest in engineering education. Emergency Remote Learning (ERL) imposed challenging conditions on education, and its impact was especially noticeable in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. This is mainly due to intrinsic cognitive load associated with the high presence of abstract concepts and to difficulties to establish connections among subjects to foster generative processing. Suitable integration of multimedia resources might be beneficial in both regards. The use of didactic videos as pedagogical aid is expected to yield positive results in electrical engineering education, mitigating the impact caused by ERL situations. Using concept maps to identify key concepts in the Electrical Engineering BSc, this article proposes the creation and integration of nine videos to enhance conceptual learning and the creation of links among subjects. This study encompassed three academic years (from 2019 to 2022), covering pre-ERL, ERL and post-ERL scenarios, and considering a total sample of 157 students. By using a Mixed Methods research design, this study has demonstrated how the integration of didactic videos mitigated the negative effects of the unprecedented ERL conditions, with positive impact on students’ perception on videos’ implications in enhancing their interest and understanding of the subject’s concepts.

Engineering undergraduates face some specific challenges during their studies, such as an intense presence of abstract concepts in their subjects as well as the inability to connect different technical subjects into the big picture of the degree. This is also common to other STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines. Multimedia resources as a complement to education present benefits that might help increasing students motivation and performance. This research focuses on YouTube as a source for those resources, presenting a qualitative analysis of the educational use of an electrical engineering channel, through the evaluation of its audience perceptions. A total of 524 open participations have been collected, coded, and analyzed. Exploratory and cooccurrences analyses show a predominant use of these videos for understanding and gaining knowledge, considering them interesting and of good quality. This study confirms that subjective perception from the channel's audience is mainly positive for its integration in pedagogical processes.