Use of instructional videos in leadership education in higher education under COVID-19: A qualitative study

could facilitate students’ meaningful learning and enhance their higher order thinking skills [101, 102]. A study on college-level sustainability courses revealed that working on “real world problem” could strengthen students’ learning attitude, including self-regulation and self- responsibility [103]. Sixth, for students’ class participation, this study found that the videos enabled students to learn and digest course content before class, so they would gain more interest in the topics and could answer teachers’ questions during lectures. Students also highlighted that using the vid- eos to induce class discussion could motivate them to participate in the discussion. Investigat- ing the combination of animated videos and flipped classroom approach in a college-level biochemistry course, Wikandari et al. [16] argued that videos enabled students to learn at their own pace before attending lectures, while the flipped classroom approach allowed the imple- mentation of interactive in-class problem solving activities. Besides, Danker [104] supported that the combination of flipped classroom and inquiry-based activities in lectures could engage students, enhance their curiosity and improve their higher-order thinking skills. The objective of the “Tomorrow’s Leaders” course was to enhance college students’ leader- ship qualities through strengthening their positive youth development (PYD) attributes, which are important qualities of positive mental health. We have developed videos based on various

PYD attributes, including self-leadership, cognitive competence, social-emotional competence, resilience, moral competence, spirituality, law-abiding leadership, cultural competence, effec- tive communication, and team building. Our previous quantitative studies showed that the 24 videos were able to improve college students’ learning and implementation of the leadership concepts in their daily lives [46, 47]. The current study used the qualitative research approach through the student focus group interviews. The findings showed that students had positive perceptions of the video content, video design and video arrangement. The results also revealed the videos were able to strengthen their pre-lesson self-learning, learning of course content and class participation, which may eventually contribute to the psychosocial well- being of the students. Studies have shown the positive relationship between adolescents’ leadership qualities and their mental health [37–39], so the production of these videos has public health implications. Furthermore, studies showed that mental health problems during adolescence, including depression, anxiety, personality disorders, eating disorder and substance abuse, would persist into adulthood [105, 106]. Besides, young people with mental disorders were likely to fail at key life events that happened during adolescence, including academic pursuit, job-hunting, friendships and romantic relationships establishment [107]. These young people had greater risks of having low social and economic status during adulthood [108, 109]. From the public

health perspective, early interventions of adolescents’ mental health problems could prevent the progression of primary and comorbid mental disorders into adulthood [107]. Therefore, the current project on developing educational videos for positive youth development could enhance adolescents’ mental health and have implications for public health. 4.1. Triangulation of research findings Triangulation could take four forms: comparing different data sources, involving multiple investigators, testing competing hypotheses, or including results from different research meth- ods [75, 110]. In this study, the triangulation of methods was applied. The goal of this form of triangulation analysis is to look for convergence of results from different methods. When the results corroborate with each other, the validity of the findings is established [111]. Researchers supported the use of triangulation of different methods, including quantitative and qualitative approaches, to strengthen the validity of a study [53]. However, the implementation of PLOS ONE Qualitative evaluation of virtual teaching and learning videos in leadership education PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291861 September 21, 2023 18 / 28