An online faculty TV YouTube based portal as multilingual and multidisciplinary learning tool in teacher training

Abstract

Social media, and especially videos in social media, are an important source of exchange of information in today´s society. Pre-service teachers, as well as other university students, are already social media users and producers in their daily life, which is totally different from utilising and producing these sort of resources as educational tools in their learning contexts. Training pre-service teachers in generating online didactic resources (videos) could improve their teaching professional skills. The present study researches about professional teaching skills development and enhancement through a didactic experience exchange among pre-service teachers from different teacher training faculties, and in-service teachers and their students in Elementary/Secondary Schools. Besides, this study analyses differences in video generation produced not only by future teachers from various disciplines and educational stages (Early Childhood, Primary and Secondary Education), but also by in-service teachers. The study attends to the types of videos and edition tools applied, and highlights experience implementation facilitating factors among teachers, students, institutions, educational stages and countries. To promote students´ collaborative learning, participant university teachers started different YouTube channels for their courses whilst their students produced didactic videos in order to be uploaded to these channels. These YouTube channels were connected to the main (YouTube and web-paged based) portal (Didactictac TV) at the Teacher Training and Education Faculty of the University of Oviedo. In addition, education faculties from other regions and countries, and some elementary and secondary schools joined the project, producing their own videos which were also included in the portal in a specific section for schools. Although teachers were initially informed about channels design requirements, a great diversity of topics and editing formats according to teachers´ and students´ digital skills and choices was found. Some of the involved faculties and schools did not use YouTube channels at all, or used them to produce unlisted videos due to privacy-related issues, especially, in the case of elementary schools. Occasionally, YouTube channels were started by university teachers but, in some other instances, depending on pre-service digital skills and teachers´ flexibility, future teachers became supervisors of their own channels. More than 300 didactic videos with more than 23,000 views were produced through this experience. A wide range of topics and languages were used in the videos: Spanish, Asturian, English, Japanese and Polish. Finally, pre-service teachers’ valuation on the experience was collected through discussion groups and questionnaires, which allowed to explore and determine video production success and educational stages and institutions projects and interests. On the other hand, flexibility in video production requirements became one of the most relevant characteristics of the project, which proved a high heterogeneity. Through this experience, education faculties and schools are connected to this online TV portal which promotes the dissemination of their audio-visual didactic products, resulting in a beneficial interaction among educational entities. This innovative experience has been considered a success, regarding the large number of teachers, students, and institutions involved. Similarly, the variety of video styles, languages and content produced reveals a multicultural, multilingual and fruitful didactic project. The experience will help pre-service teachers design their future educational videos, use and implement educational networks and improve their teaching competences, especially, the technological one.