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

educational videos was relatively scarce when compared to studies in secondary education context [121, 122], further research should be conducted to strengthen our understanding on this topic. Qualitative research employs a naturalistic approach to understand phenomenon in its nat- ural or context-specific settings [53], so it allows researchers to examine deeper understanding of a phenomenon [123]. The current study demonstrated how the videos benefited students’ pre-lesson self-learning and learning of course content, and enhanced their class participation. More qualitative research or mixed method studies could be implemented in the future, so we could accumulate evidence on how educational videos benefit students’ learning, thus contrib- uting to evidence-based teaching practice [124]. 5. Conclusions This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating students’ positive perceptions of the video arrangement, design and content, and their subjective benefits from watching the 24 instructional videos in a leadership course covering psychosocial competence in a Hong Kong university. First, the study found that the pre-lesson video watching arrangement allowed stu- dents to have flexible self-learning, better understanding of lecture content, and more discus- sion during lectures. The pre-lesson blended learning exercise also engaged students and improved their understanding of lecture topics. Second, students perceived that various video features had contributed to their learning, including the pointers and lists in theory-related

videos and the real-life filming in case-based videos. Third, in terms of video content, similari- ties between the content and students’ daily lives or the social issues could improve students’ learning effectiveness. Fourth, the clear explanation of theories in the theory-related videos and the case-based videos’ down to earth content enabled students’ to self-study the videos before lecture. Fifth, most students believed that the videos could facilitate their understanding of course content. Besides, students perceived that the two kinds of videos complement each other, with the theories explaining the cases and the cases demonstrating the application of theories. Sixth, students perceived that the videos could enhance their class participation because they could have more interest in the lecture topics and answer teachers’ in-class ques- tions after gaining understanding of the course content from the pre-lesson videos. Supporting information S1 Dataset. (DOCX) Author Contributions Conceptualization: Daniel T. L. Shek, Lu Yu. Data curation: Daniel T. L. Shek, Tingyin Wong, Xiang Li. Funding acquisition: Daniel T. L. Shek. Methodology: Daniel T. L. Shek. Project administration: Daniel T. L. Shek, Xiang Li, Lu Yu. Supervision: Daniel T. L. Shek, Xiang Li, Lu Yu. Writing – original draft: Daniel T. L. Shek, Tingyin Wong. Writing – review & editing: Daniel T. L. Shek, Xiang Li. 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 22 / 28