We are very excited to share new research produced by UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight as part of the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) initiative. The Cooney Center was fortunate to hear insights from the researchers as the report was being finalized.

From a Cooney Center perspective, there are several things that we love about it:

Many initiatives work to create a framework and then leave it there. The RITEC initiative developed the RITEC-8 well-being framework by asking kids what well-being meant to them, but then they took it a step further.

They then asked the question – does this framework hold up when tested with kids actually engaging in digital play? The answer in the research featured in this new report was mostly yes! But the testing results did cause the researchers to make some adjustments to the well-being outcomes: the RITEC-8 have been adjusted to: Autonomy, Competence, Emotions, Identities, Relationships, Creativity, Safety and Security, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

The publication of this research will be followed later this year by the launch of a guide to assist businesses in incorporating these findings into the games they design, translating research into actual practice.

The research broke out of the usual echo chamber. It was conducted with kids in six countries around the world, including three from the Global South, and involved children with a range of backgrounds, including some children with disabilities. We believe strongly that the more designers can understand the perspective and experiences of all kinds of kids, they will be better able to create digital environments that meet their needs.

This research is thoroughly and carefully child-centered. It met kids where they are, took innovative approaches to getting their perspectives, and allowed kids to disrupt the research plans:

• The biometric research involved showing the kids measurement of their reactions while they were playing games; the children were then asked to explain what they were feeling and why. We love this because it is not simply relying on an adult read of the data. It allows kids to give some extra nuance (and also gets them involved in thinking about their emotional reactions to their reactions while they are playing).
• The ethnographic research allowed for the messiness of life to be incorporated into the research results. No child is playing a digital game in a vacuum. They are impacted by their homelife, they are hopping from a digital experience to homework, to eating dinner, back to digital play after a long day at school where they may have struggled on a test or scored a great goal playing soccer at recess.
• The experimental research was designed for children to play games individually on their own tablets. But the researchers noted that the kids almost immediately gathered together to turn the game play into a community activity – underscoring the importance that social connection plays for children’s well-being. Other kids asked if they had to play online games or whether they could go outside to play instead – suggesting that kids often have a holistic understanding of their own wellbeing and how to balance the on and offline worlds.

We urge you all to read this engaging report – where children’s voices, perspectives and experiences come to life and provide us all with insights that will help us to create better digital play experiences for them.

Read the press release

Read the full report

The importance of play for children’s development and learning has long been recognized by parents, educators and researchers.¹ Much of our lives are now being lived in digital contexts, and this is true for children as well. With the global popularity of video games such as Minecraft and Angry Birds, a great deal of children’s play these days includes digital games. This has raised some concerns about possible negative effects of digital technology, and it is important that parents help their children find balance in their lives². However, we should also consider that digital games may actually be of benefit to children by supporting play that can enhance well-being.

To determine how digital games can potentially enhance well-being, our team at New York University and City University New York Graduate Center joined with colleagues from the University of Sheffield, the Queensland University of Technology, and UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight to conduct research on this topic. The study findings were recently published in a report released this week as part of the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) project, an international collaboration co-founded by UNICEF and the LEGO Group and funded by the LEGO Foundation.

For our portion of the research, we, along with our graduate student teams, invited children (ages 8 to 12) to play a select set of tablet-based video games. We chose six commercially available, child-friendly games (Plants vs. Zombies, Rocket League, Angry Birds, World of Goo; LEGO Builders Journey, LEGO Tower) that included play activities potentially related to a theory-based well-being framework³.

Through observation of the children playing, video analysis of gameplay, as well as post-play interviews with the children to ask them what they liked or disliked in a game and how playing made them feel, we identified specific patterns of play related to different well-being concepts. The digital play experiences fell into distinct categories, in addition to enjoyment and relaxation, the three most prominent being: Competence, Agency/Autonomy, and Relatedness/Belonging.

• Competence is fostered through digital play experiences that enhance children’s perceptions of their efficacy, skills, and abilities, leading to a sense of mastery and achievement. For example, one child scored low against a computer opponent in Rocket League, a soccer game with cars. After learning some tricks and practicing, the child was able to score higher in the game. Digital play allows children to experience mastery and feel that they can achieve goals through their own effort.
• Autonomy and agency are fostered when children have control over their own play experiences, resulting in feelings of agency, choice, and freedom. One common example of this is character customization, where children are able to do things such as dress game characters like themselves or name them after their best friends.
• Relatedness and belonging are fostered when children are able to form social connections with other players, or even parasocial connections with game characters, to create a sense of belonging. This can happen when children solve challenges collaboratively, ask more experienced players for help, or share their accomplishments with friends – either online or in person.

The observations study revealed the potential of the selected digital games to influence child well-being. The team then conducted research to determine if playing digital games does actually enhance children’s well-being. For the intervention, 8- to 12-year-old children from the US, Chile, and South Africa played tablet-based digital games over the course of a 10-week afterschool program. To serve as a control group, well-being measures were also given to other children from the same schools who participated in their usual afterschool activities, like basketball or playground games. Using established surveys³,⁴, the children’s well-being was measured before and after the digital play intervention. Comparing the play and control groups in the three countries, key findings include:

• For the digital play group in South Africa, there was a significant gain in overall well-being.
• In the United States and Chile, there were also positive effects of digital play: Children who indicated specific psychological needs in the pretest demonstrated improvements in related aspects of well-being in the posttest. For example, children with greater feelings of loneliness and social exclusion had post-play improvements in the well-being construct of relatedness.
• Finally, even though the children all had their own tablets to play games, they still socialized with one another. For example, children compared scores and challenged each other, shared hints and tips, and made-up stories involving their different games. These social interactions were found to be positively related to gains in children’s well-being.

We also asked parents about their opinions, feelings, and experiences regarding digital gameplay. Results showed that parents who play games themselves and parents who have more positive attitudes about potential benefits of games were more likely to co-play with their children. Co-play is one of the ways that digital games could benefit well-being, particularly for younger children.

Although more work is needed, there are some takeaway messages for parents from this research. First, digital play – like other forms of play – does have the potential to benefit children’s well-being. However, different games have different potential benefits. Parents should look for games that allow children to engage in activities related to well-being, such as setting and achieving goals to foster a sense of competence in children. Children also tend to seek out games and play that meet their own unique needs.

Another finding is that playing digital games, even single-player games, is often social for children, and the social connection made through games can support well-being. For younger children, this can occur through co-playing with their parents. Finally, parents should talk to their children about why they like to play digital games, what they enjoy about it, and how it makes them feel. It will allow parents to better understand their children, and children to better understand themselves.

 

References

¹ Homer, B.D., Raffaele, C. & Henderson, H. (2020). Games as Playful Learning: Implications of Developmental Theory for Game-Based Learning. In J.L. Plass, R.E. Mayer, & B.D. Homer (Eds), The Handbook of Game-based Learning (pp. 25-52). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

² https://joanganzcooneycenter.org/initiative/ritec/

³ https://www.unicef.org/innocenti/reports/responsible-innovation-technology-children

⁴ Ravens-Sieberer, U., Auquier, P., Erhart, M., Gosch, A., Rajmil, L., Bruil, J., Power, M., Duer, W., Gloetta, B., Gzemy, L., Mazur, J., Czimbalmos, Atountas, Y., Hagquist, C., & Kilro, J. (2007). The KIDSCREEN-27 quality of life measure for children and adolescents: psychometric results from a cross-cultural survey in 13 European countries. Qual Life Res, 16, 1347–1356. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-007-9240-2

⁵ Van der Kaap-Deeder, J., Soenens, B., Ryan, R. M., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2020). Manual of the Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale (BPNSFS). Ghent University, Belgium.

 

 

Dr. Bruce D. Homer is a Professor of Educational Psychology in the Learning, Development and Instruction subprogram. He is the director of the Child Interactive Learning and Development (CHILD) Lab at the Graduate Center. His research examines how children acquire and use “cultural tools” to store and transmit knowledge (e.g., language, literacy, and information technologies), and how these tools transform developmental and learning processes.

 

Fabian Froehlich is an academic with a diverse background in film and media studies. Prior to pursuing his graduate studies, Fabian worked in the film industry, using his creativity and technical skills to entertain audiences. After transitioning to academia, he turned his attention to the use of media for educational purposes. He graduated in Media and Technology Education Studies at the University of British Columbia, a field that allows him to explore his passion for the intersection of media and education. His research interests center on learning in virtual worlds, a cutting-edge area of study that examines how virtual environments can be used to enhance learning outcomes.

In January 2024, the Cooney Center announced 10 fellows in our inaugural Well-being By Design cohort. Since then, the fellows have been meeting regularly to learn about the frameworks and approaches that can help media and technology companies integrate well-being principles deeply into their products for children.

During this period, the fellows have had opportunities to workshop their emerging insights with a parallel cohort of teenagers in the Cooney Center’s Youth Design Team. With representation from across three US time zones, this diverse group of young people brought their perspectives, questions, and interests into rich dialogues with the fellows. The results of these intergenerational conversations were valuable for everyone involved: fellows established a better sense of “ground truth” based on the first-person experiences of the youth designers; youth designers broadened their understanding of how research, design, and product development unfolds in professional settings; and in some cases, sparks of genuinely new ideas began to catch fire.

The Cooney Center’s 2024 Youth Design Team

Candice (11th grade)	Hasan (11th grade)	Kosmo (9th grade)
Leena (11th grade)	Prince (11th grade)	Ryan (8th grade)
Sally (11th grade)	Simran (11th grade)	Tithi (9th grade)

 

Aatash Parikh, Well-being By Design fellow and founder of Inkwire, shared that, “Working with the Youth Design Team gave us not only fresh and practical product feedback from a youth perspective, but it helped us explore new possibilities and directions that we hadn’t considered for how our product could empower young people.”

The youth designers felt similarly enthusiastic about their experience with Inkwire and the nine other companies represented by the fellows in the cohort:

Learning about how companies are using their platform to target diverse audiences has inspired me to think about the relationships I have and how I can use my technological experiences to benefit my community. —Leena

When I first entered the program I was nervous to share ideas and contribute. What I didn’t realize was the amazing crew and designers that were validating my ideas and made me feel like my contribution was useful. —Hasan

I do feel that I have had an impact on technologies that I or other people might use by not only applying my own unique experiences but also putting myself in other people’s shoes. With PBS KIDS, for example, I suggested possible activities I would have loved as a kid and how to make these activities more accessible for kids today. —Simran

I think all the other fellows and I have helped make the designs a lot more personalized and focused to our age range. I noticed that many of the designs seemed very general. With our input, we made sure that they were personalized and appealing to young people. —Tithi

I’ve come to realize that a product is made through a lot of trial and error and built up by the feedback of many people.  —Sally

The Youth Design Team concluded with a panel discussion with three of the fellows so that the youth could understand their career paths and ask questions important to them. We also asked for feedback from both the adult fellows and youth designers as the Cooney Center looks forward to bringing more youth into design conversations, particularly for teens who are interested in seeking careers in design and technology.

In addition to the reciprocal learning among the adult fellows and youth designers, we at the Cooney Center learned a lot through this experience too. One of our favorite takeaways: both the youth and adults wanted to spend more time with each other and build sustained relationships. As one youth designer put it,

My only improvement would be having more meetings. I absolutely loved this experience, and the only way I could see it improving is if there were more opportunities and meetings with fellows. —Candice

 

We couldn’t agree with her more. Special thanks to the whole Youth Design Team for a great experience!

 

 

Imagine an education system designed from the ground up around fundamental human needs, from strong social bonds to cultural flourishing on a healthy planet. We are an inventive species, now with fantastically powerful tools, but limited wisdom to use them toward good. Solving this mismatch may be the key to our collective well-being. In this essay, I sketch an educational approach for building wisdom, with a special focus on learning through social interactions with other people, and one-way parasocial interactions with others via media (video instructors, social media influencers, fictional characters, etc.), as well as interactions with non-human agents (chatbots, AI-driven tutors, etc.).

Systems of education include three essential features: a curriculum defining what should be learned, pedagogies guiding how learning occurs, and a theme addressing — implicitly or explicitly — a wider goal or purpose. We live in a rapidly changing, high-stakes world of artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, robotic automation, extended reality, quantum computing, brain-computer interfaces, climate change, nuclear threat, political polarization, social conflict, and more. Education must help people develop healthy, constructive relationships to a world in flux.

In this light, wisdom should be the central goal of education in the 21st century, to help individuals, groups, and our species survive and thrive in challenging times. The curriculum ought to help people find the positive potential in changes, and be ready for anything — for example, by developing deep, flexible understanding of ourselves (e.g., building mindfulness, executive function, self-efficacy), our sociality (relationships, communities, institutions, cultures, etc.), and how the world works (e.g., first principles of the physical, living, social, and digital realms). Various pedagogies should support diverse needs, with social learning playing a central role — people learning from people.

Why center social learning? First, it’s a deeply human activity, evident across history and cultures — toddlers watching parents, apprentices working shoulder-to-shoulder with master craftspeople, and interns engaging in legitimate peripheral participation in a modern-day work setting. Second, it affords acquisition of skills, knowledge, and dispositions applied in relevant, “real world” contexts. Third, it supports social-emotional development through relations with others — both in-group and out-group, familiar and unfamiliar. Fourth, its core pedagogical power can be extended through parasocial interactions with others in print, audio, video, digital environments, and other media. In this way, individuals may form one-way parasocial relationships with real people or fictional characters, or with interactive non-human agents. Finally, the combined use of social and parasocial relations can be designed to emphasize essential human values such as empathy, compassion, collaboration, ethics, and even wisdom.

Wisdom has many definitions (see Resources below). As an educational goal, it should be defined to engage a diversity of learners, illuminate essential features, and guide wise action. The Oxford Dictionary suggests that wisdom is “the ability to use your knowledge and experience to make good decisions and judgments”. Given the urgency and gravitas of building wisdom in our current era, I focus on five aspects that may readily be operationalized to help learners, young and old:

• present – be aware of one’s current experience and context (in the physical, living, social, and digital realms),
• past – understand historical trajectories,
• future – orient towards the future,
• diversity – honor multiple perspectives, and
• action – do social good.

To illustrate this approach, consider what a project for wisdom might look like. A group of tweens, teens, and adults come together to improve a local park, abandoned lot, or other neighborhood space. They engage multiple stakeholders to help envision what they might create together. The process includes historical analysis of similar projects and previous expectations for this space. And, it emphasizes finding new synergies across diverse perspectives, much like a jigsaw curriculum might achieve in an academic context. With a solid sense of self, and experience engaging the world from various perspectives, participants practice adapting to change. They have repeated experiences addressing a problem from one perspective, pivoting to a new perspective, reflecting on differences and commonalities, and synthesizing new knowledge to inform their solutions.

How might social/parasocial learning benefit this sort of educational synergy project? Imagine a set of Learning Archetypes (characters or personas that represent the central qualities of specific domains of knowledge) brought to life in fictional stories, or through AI-based characters, and together being greater than the sum of their parts. Participants might consult an Artist Archetype to help facilitate conversations about the aesthetic appeal of the project, and making connections to local artists willing to advise them. Likewise, Learning Archetypes might take the role of Athletes to consider physical engagement, Naturalists to advise on environmental impact, Authors to support written reflection and reporting, and Teachers to facilitate learning among participants and interested others. As a result, individuals inhabit an archetypal role, pivot to another one, reflect on complementary perspectives, and synthesize new insights or design activities.

Imagine projects like this being part of a holistic curriculum, designed to guide learning and development, lifelong, and lifewide. Like developmentally-oriented early childhood education, it would include core domains such as physical, social-emotional, and cognitive growth. It would adapt to the needs of individuals at different stages of life and cultural contexts. The social/parasocial approach to curriculum and pedagogy would incorporate a diverse set of social roles to represent a holistic range of development. Like a board of advisors guiding a business executive, a team of domain-specialized life coaches, or the proverbial “village” of caring adults raising a child, the circle of Learning Archetypes would support a well-rounded approach to human development and learning.

Consider another neighborhood project, this time from the perspective of a young participant supported by a diverse circle of peers and elders. Ella feels encouraged by her team to identify personal strengths and how to use them in the project — in this case, using her artistic skills to design a mural about the urban ecosystem for a blank warehouse wall. Her sense of agency and confidence build as she researches other murals historically and around the country, and shares her findings with the team. This part of the project is a challenge. As a struggling reader, she is hesitant to consult written resources, and dreads having to write a description of her mural idea. However, with support of local mentors and online resources — including Author, Artist, and Naturalist Archetypes — she completes a set of sketches and descriptions of her mural idea, which help them get it funded by the city. She also uses this work for her service learning requirements at school.

Ella’s participation in the mural project encompasses the five core features of wise action mentioned above. First she visited the warehouse site and a local park to reflect on her experience of each, and considered how to evoke a sense of awe and gratitude for the living world using a three-story expanse of brick (present). Collaborating with teammates, she learned about the history of the warehouse, and competing plans for its future (past, future). She alternated looking at the challenge from an aesthetic perspective of various materials as seen by pedestrians walking; then, from a naturalist’s view of how urban plants thrive in a web of interdependencies (flow of water, sun, and nutrients, undisturbed by other activities); and an author’s task of communicating ideas to a diverse audience of peers and adults (diversity). She used these various perspectives to inform her creative process, craft a winning proposal, and help build an innovative mural, combining paint, sculpture, climbing areas, and a vertical garden growing from the brick wall (action). In her own small way, Ella made a wise contribution to her community, contributed to decreasing climate change and social polarization, and gained skills that will be useful in her future.

In this way, educating for wisdom should be a core activity in the 21st century. Along with incremental improvements to existing academic systems, we need to envision new educational paradigms aligned with the needs of individuals, groups, institutions, and communities in a world of exponential technological change. With this sort of human-centered approach to supporting development and learning, we just might succeed in building a world that works for everyone.

 

 

For a detailed exploration of these topics, please contact the author by Monday, May 29th to receive a free “beta” version of this upcoming book, tentatively titled: How to Survive the 21st Century: Wisdom for a Rapidly Changing World. drjimgraywisdom2024[at]gmail.com.

 

 

Resources:

• Legitimate peripheral participation (Wikipedia). 
• Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, 1991. Jean Lave & Etienne  Wenger. 
• The Jigsaw Classroom (website).
• Designing for Parasocial Relationships and Learning: Linear Video, Interactive Media, and Artificial Intelligence. James H. Gray, Emily Reardon, and Jennifer A. Kotler
• SEVEN GRANDFATHER TEACHINGS (website)
• What is “Indigenous Knowledge” And Why Does It Matter? Integrating Ancestral Wisdom and Approaches into Federal Decision-Making, (blog post). The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). 
• Conceptualizations of Wisdom in the Native American Community, 2012. Lamar Smith, (PhD Dissertation) Antioch University, Santa Barbara, CA.
• The Cambridge Dictionary: “wisdom” definition.
• Oxford English Dictionary: “wisdom” definition.
• Wikipedia: “wisdom” entry. 

Dr. James H. Gray (Jim) has a background in human development, learning science, early childhood education, school reform, playful learning, and technology design. He has held leadership roles at several innovative educational organizations, including Sesame Workshop, the MIT Media Lab, and LeapFrog, Inc. He has also conducted education-related research at Harvard University’s Project Zero and the NSF-funded Center for Innovative Learning Technology. He is father of two teen girls, husband to an education media leader, and frequent walker of Yogi, the family’s Black Lab. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jgray344/

A new report from SRI Education describes the quality of educational YouTube videos for prekindergarten- and kindergarten-age children. Findings point to surprising differences from educational television shows, including less use of characters and plot to help kids learn.

Many parents question the quality of YouTube video content. So do researchers.

According to the 2020 Common Sense Media Census, children are spending more time watching videos online than in any other format. Streaming sites like YouTube have surpassed even television viewing. While parents may appreciate that YouTube can engage children and help them explore their unique interests, they may also wonder if YouTube videos really are effective teachers. Research backs this concern. One study found that only 1 in 20 of the videos that children watch online are of high educational value, meaning they are both age-appropriate and include topics beyond simple or superficial concepts.

But ensuring young children have access to high-quality educational videos is important, as research shows that children can learn both literacy and math skills from high-quality educational videos. The SRI research team, led by Dr. Claire Christensen, conducted this study to better understand what quality looks like in online educational videos for children.

The ultimate binge-watch: We viewed more than 1,000 YouTube videos

To describe the landscape of kids’ educational videos on YouTube, our team screened a sample of 1,198 videos that contain early literacy and/or math content. We watched and coded all these videos for four indicators of educational quality:

1. directly addresses the audience
2. involves characters
3. includes concrete examples
4. integrates math content into narrative¹

Because the videos in our sample were prescreened to check that they include early literacy or math content, the sample may not be representative of videos that children are actually searching for and watching at home.

This surprised us: Most educational YouTube videos for kids don’t teach with characters or narratives

Overall, we found a lot of variability in the ways that YouTube videos teach early literacy and math content. Unsurprisingly, most videos include concrete examples of the educational content. However, fewer videos directly address the audience or use characters to teach, and very few integrate math content into the narrative.

 

 

 

Most videos in our sample included concrete examples that children can relate to their own lives. For example, most alphabet videos include objects common to many children, such as apples and balls, and many math videos involve counting familiar objects.

 

 

Many videos directly address the audience in relationship to the educational content. For example, a video may ask children to sing along with a familiar song, such as the alphabet song, or to count along. This is reassuring, as encouraging kids to participate while watching a show can improve their comprehension.

 

Slightly fewer than half of the videos in our sample involve characters in the educational content. Songs are common examples of educational YouTube videos that do not include characters. For example, a video of an “A is for apple” type of alphabet song might present letters and objects voiced by an off-screen narrator, without including any visible characters. Nevertheless, videos with familiar characters have been shown to be more effective in supporting children’s learning.

 

 

 

 

Few early math videos integrate math content into a narrative. This is likely because few children’s videos on YouTube have a clear narrative arc into which math can be integrated. For example, song-based videos rarely include a narrative. Some researchers theorize that children are better able to comprehend educational content when it is integral to the narrative.

 

 

 

 

What does this mean for parents, content creators, and researchers?

For parents: Whereas most educational television programs include narratives and characters, fewer online educational videos do. There is more rigorous evidence for the learning benefits of high-quality educational television programs than for educational YouTube videos.

For content creators: Educational content creators can distinguish themselves in this crowded field by weaving educational content into narratives with relatable characters.

Question for future research: To what extent does the inclusion of narratives and characters influence children’s learning from educational videos? While previous research has explored the role of unfamiliar vs. familiar characters, less is known about whether the presence of narratives and characters (versus their absence) influences learning.

Kids – and the algorithm – don’t like videos with certain characteristics

We explored how likes and views of videos were related to the videos’ characteristics. Videos with two characteristics were both less preferred (fewer likes) and less recommended (fewer views):

• videos that directly address the audience (one of our quality indicators)
• videos that include more math topics (compared with videos that included fewer math topics)

These videos may be less preferred because they are less centered on a narrative and are therefore less engaging for prekindergarten- and kindergarten-age children. Whatever the reason, the fewer views for these videos suggests that the YouTube algorithm may recommend them less frequently, lowering their exposure even more.

What does this mean for parents, content creators, and researchers?

For parents: Given that kids are unlikely to watch videos in which characters make direct connections to kids’ own lives, it’s especially important for parents to help kids make those connections. Also, when searching for children’s math videos on YouTube, parents can use keywords specific to a skill their child is working on (such as “counting”) rather than their age or grade level (for example, “kindergarten math”). Such a search may yield videos with a broader focus.

For content creators: Content creators are experts in creating effective calls to action, such as prompts to like and subscribe. There is opportunity to use this expertise to create more engaging calls for children to interact with educational content in videos. Also, the algorithm may be more likely to recommend math videos focused on fewer topics than videos focused on a wider range of topics.

Questions for future research: What is the effect of participatory cues (e.g., “can you count out-loud with me?”) in short-form videos on engagement, interaction, and comprehension? While some research indicates that participatory cues support children’s learning from educational television programs, these cues may function differently on YouTube, where children may have a stronger expectation for passive entertainment and a greater temptation to skip to the next video. Also, are there other video characteristics that may explain why videos presenting fewer math topics get more likes and views? For example, do more narrowly focused videos include other engaging elements?

There are still many unknowns as children’s viewing habits shift online

There is a great need to understand the content and quality of user-generated videos as context for children’s early learning and development.

Until very recently, young children watched most of their educational content in the form of television shows. As their screen time shifts online, they are increasingly exposed to user-generated, rather than studio-created, videos. Parents, educators, and researchers alike wonder whether this new generation of educational videos is likely to support children’s learning.

Our work highlights important ways that user-generated educational videos may differ from educational television shows, including decreased reliance on narratives and characters. In addition, our findings hint at novel influences on the content and quality of online videos, such as the likelihood that the algorithm will recommend a video or that a viewer will “like” it. More research is needed to guide the creation of effective educational content in this uncharted territory.

 

 

Madeline Cincebeaux is an education research associate at SRI Education and serves as project manager and coding lead for the research team described in the above study. She has experience supporting rubric development for educational media content and conducting research on the implementation and effectiveness of educational media for young children. Madeline received her BS in psychology and human development and family studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. 

Claire Christensen  is a senior education researcher at SRI Education. Her research and evaluation work focuses on the development and impact of educational media for young children. She leads the study described in this article, as well as a program of research using machine learning to understand the educational content in videos that young children watch online. Claire received her PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

 

 

Video Image Sources

ABC Sounds and Words (Learn Alphabet Letter Sounds and Words) [Video], by English Learning Fun Station, 2021, November 22, YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEXEg1_OEF4). CC BY 3.0.

Learn Shapes in the Jungle | Pinkfong Shape Songs | 15-Minute Learning With Baby Shark [Video], by Pinkfong Baby Shark – Kids’ Songs & Stories, 2023, November 25, YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmUsz5GVWok). CC BY 3.0.

Kids Learning Alphabet Letters [Video], by Bryce Channel, 2023, January 11, YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3A5YF7-dis). CC BY 3.0.

Secret Agent Shapes (Song for Kids About Finding Basic Shapes in the Room) [Video], by Harry Kindergarten Music, 2015, June 26, YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aStqhksCuY). CC BY 3.0.

 

Footnotes:

¹ We did not measure this indicator for literacy content because it was uncommon in a test sample of videos.