All’s Simple (Club)? Education and Learning in the Digital World

Abstract

Young people use the potentials of digital media to learn outside of school, for example through explanatory videos and tutorials. The use of such YouTube videos has long since found its way into everyday school life. However, it is entirely unclear how the (educational) market for explanatory videos and tutorials currently presents itself, especially to pupils since it is no longer shaped solely by semi-professional and amateurishly created moving images. In this article, we present the first data and findings of a market analysis of school-related explanatory videos and tutorials with their communicative embedding, and of a survey of ca. 700 secondary school students regarding their usage and motivation gathered for the BMBF-funded project "Digital extracurricular learning and education-related action practices of young people". We present a scope of forms these videos can take, show how differently knowledge and education are valued and how the students’ attention is increasingly treated as a good in business models.