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

interviews allowed researchers to repeatedly check whether the emerging themes truly repre- sented participants’ accounts [61]. Second, rich verbatim extracts enabled readers to judge the truthfulness of the final themes [75, 76]. Both of these strategies were used in this study to ensure that the findings represented the data collected, thus enhancing the validity of the research. Third, emerging themes were discussed transparently among the researchers in this project to ensure that biases in the research method were minimized, which could enhance the reliability of this study [61, 72]. Fourth, inter-rater reliability was conducted to verify the strength of the findings [54, 77]. 20 randomly selected narratives from the focus group inter- views were presented to two independent researchers and they were asked to re-code these narratives. The result showed that the two researchers agreed on 18 out of 20 codes. This showed a high level of inter-rater reliability in the analyses (inter-rater reliability = 18/ 20 = 0.9). These two strategies ensured that researchers arrived at similar codes or themes in the data analysis, thus enhancing the reliability of the current research. Fifth, triangulation was a typical strategy to enhance the validity of research findings [73, 75]. The triangulation of the findings in the current study and findings from our previous quantitative study is presented in the discussion section of this paper. 3. Results This section presents and analyzes the first and second order codes under six categories of

responses (i.e., themes). The six themes are: 1) video arrangement, 2) video design, 3) video content, 4) videos’ benefits to the students’ pre-lesson self-learning, 5) videos’ benefits to the students’ learning of course content, and 6) videos’ benefits to the students’ class participation. These themes are presented below. 3.1. Video arrangement In terms of the video arrangement, this study examined three aspects: 1) positive effect on stu- dents’ learning, 2) connection between the videos and the lectures, and 3) drawback to stu- dents’ learning. First, for the positive effect of the video arrangement, students expressed that the pre-lesson video watching arrangement allowed students to pace their learning according to their own needs and gain more flexibility (N = 6). With the addition of the videos and the blended learn- ing exercise, lecture time was reduced from 3 hours to 2 hours, which enhanced their concen- tration in lectures (N = 9). As elaborated by a student: “This course used to have 3 hours lectures. However, with the addition of the e-learning modules, including watching the videos and answering [the blended learning] questions before lectures, lecture time is reduced to 2 hours. This is beneficial to my concentration in lectures. My concentration is better in 2-hour lectures. Without these videos, we would have 3-hour lectures. Even though we could take a break in the 3-hour lecture, the learning outcome would not be very good.” (Group 8 Line 68–70) This arrangement also allowed students to gain better understanding of the lecture content

and engage more in class discussion (N = 19). As stated by one student: “I think the arrangement is reasonable. The videos are like pre-lesson preparation materials. There are many theories introduced in the videos. If we can’t digest it in class, we can’t dis- cuss it on the spot. Watching these videos before class gives us time to digest, so we can bet- ter answer questions about this topic in class discussion.” (Group 6 Line 130–132) 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 8 / 28