There are so many tools available on the Internet for your online education. One of them is YouTube. According to an article published on SocialMediaNews.com, there were 14.3 million YouTube UAVs in May of 2016 in Australia alone. That means a lot of people have enough knowledge of this social media site to use it effectively. While it is unclear how many students are among this group, you can be certain that even kids know how to navigate the millions of videos on YouTube.
This is why YouTube is a tool that you can really benefit from in elearning. We all know how videos can be effective in making any learning process enriching. If you make the learning experience memorable, you can increase the retention rate and thus the effectiveness of the course.
If you want further convincing, here are 3 benefits to using YouTube as a material for online education.
Lowers your elearning budget.
Let us be practical. Creating a video, at least one that is Hollywood worthy, can be costly. If you want to lower your budget and still enjoy high-quality videos, YouTube can help you with that. It is every easy to tap into existing video materials online. There are various materials available and you are bound to find one that you can use for your course. A lot of them are created well and you can use them for free. You do not have to pay to produce them. All it takes is embedding the video in your course and you should be good to go. Just remember to give credit where it is due so you do not run into any legal problems. Embedding videos is a common practice so it is very unlikely that you will have problems.
Provides a rich source of resources.
If you cannot embed videos, you can still include links that learners can enjoy. You can develop the love of self-learning in the students by encouraging them to do their own research. Sometimes, pointing them in the right direction is enough to help. Given that idea, make sure your online course holds various links to videos that the students can explore on their own. It is easy to do a quick research on YouTube to find relevant videos that you can use. The great thing about this is, you do not have to change a lot in the design of your online education. However, you can still encourage the students to seek out other materials that will increase their knowledge further.
Allows mobile and microlearning.
Another benefit of using YouTube is in microlearning and mobile learning. If you want to use short videos, there is always one on YouTube that you can use. After all, a lot of the videos uploaded on this portal are 10 minutes or less. There may be longer versions but you have the freedom to clip videos so you can use only what you need in microlearning. When it comes to mobile learning, the site is flexible enough to allow learners to access it through their smartphones or tablets. It does not matter if the screen is small – YouTube can show the video without distorting the material.
As an online education material, YouTube can be a great partner in using videos to enrich the learning experience of the students. Make sure you explore this so you can maximize the potential to use videos in your course.
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