ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION AND COVID-19: LEARNING, DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY, AND THE USE OF YOUTUBE AS A TEACHING PLATFORM IN PANDEMIC

Abstract

Environmental education (EE) is an indispensable and urgent cross-cutting theme for society. The
isolation brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic has profoundly changed social relationships
and daily routines. In the teaching context, digital technology and e-learning have gained
emphasis in academic activities and events. The objective was to identify and discuss how
YouTube™ supported the expansion of higher education. The qualitative study examined 283
videos on YouTube™ posted between February 2020 to February 2021, which went through
exploratory, bibliographic, and thematic analysis. Watching online videos is one of the most
performed activities in Brazil, according to data from PNAD (2017), and, in the learning process,
YouTube™ presents the most effective resources in supporting the dissemination of e-learning
by university students through web events. In general, YouTube™ videos have widely served to
meet the interests of various institutions that sought success, ease, democratization, and
dissemination of audiovisual content but urgently need to expand the digital accessibility of their
events to people with visual and hearing disabilities