To learn anything, become a YouTuber

Quick links

🌠 Check out our presentation for a quick overview

📖 Check out the full analysis here (Notion site)

Team project for Foundation of Learning Science, Fall 2024, taught by the wonderful Bernice d’Anjou.

Intro

On November 23, 2023, PewDiePie, a popular YouTube content creator who once held the record of having the most subscribers on the platform, published a video titled “Teaching myself to draw for no reason.”, where he flips through his sketchbook and comments on what he drew and learned as a total beginner for the past 30 days.

PewDiePie subsequently published “I Drew Every Day for 100 DAYS!” and “I Drew Every Day for 365 Days….. *it was painful” in a similar format. As of November 2024, the three videos grossed over 14 million views.

Fig 1. A screenshot of PewDiePie’s video thumbnail.

This type of videos, where an individual tries to take on a new skill and document every step of their journey, have become an entire genre on YouTube in recent years. Titles like “1 Year of Learning Web Development (Self Taught)” or “My One-Year Guitar Progress” are just a few examples that attract millions of views.

Clearly, this genre of videos is resonating with people. Now, the question is: is it an effective way to learn?  What can learning designers, researchers, and learners learn from these videos?

Selected slides