Course:LIBR559A/Jung, I., & Lee, Y. (2015)

Citation

Jung, I., & Lee, Y. (2015). YouTube acceptance by university educators and students: A cross-cultural perspective. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 52(3), 243-253. doi:10.1080/14703297.2013.805986

Annotation

The authors’ goal with this article is to analyze differences in usage patterns of YouTube by university educators and students in the United States and Japan, suggest ways to use YouTube in education, and determine how appropriate it is to apply the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology to such an analysis. They performed their analysis by doing a survey of 569 students and 56 educators at Japanese and American universities, and then applying the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology to the survey results.

They came up with three main points: First, universities and educators should try to encourage adoption of technologies like YouTube by "providing technical support for video creation, offering assistance with copyright clearance, compiling lists of quality educational videos across different subject areas and advising students how and how not to use this technology for individual and collaborative learning." (p. 251) Second, universities in cultures that emphasize the importance of authority should emphasize the importance of autonomy when it comes to finding and creatively using online content to supplement their studies. Finally, educators in societies where social influence has a strong effect on technology utilization should consider presenting things like educational YouTube content in the classroom first (in a controlled environment), so that students can feel an appreciation for the materials, and in turn seek them out on their own.

While the article was novel in its recommending that teachers become advocates for using educational content as a pedagogical tool, its weakness is in the age of the data they used in their analysis: while the article was published in 2015, the data were gathered in 2010. Given the rapid changes in how information technology changes, another review of the information may be in order, or gathering and analysis of new data.

The researchers' first point regarding educators' roles as partners or evangelists of educational YouTube content is immediately important to academic librarianship. The list of practices they recommend: "providing technical support for video creation, offering assistance with copyright clearance, compiling lists of quality educational videos across different subject areas and advising students how and how not to use this technology for individual and collaborative learning," are all services that academic libraries provide to their institutions (p. 251). Librarians can in turn evangelize to educators and reference this work to support their work.

Page Author: Peter Musser