Digital Videos of Experiments Produced by Students: Learning Possibilities

Currently, digital technologies arise as additional tools for the inclusion of practical activities, intertwining lab work, audiovisual language, and chemical language. In this sense, this chapter describes some of the contributions of video production to chemistry teaching, based on the evaluation of videos produced by students and their opinions about the production process. This study involved 31 students enrolled in a general chemistry course from a Brazilian Federal University. Video analysis was in agreement with the questionnaire results, and both demonstrated students’ engagement. Feelings of autonomy and competence seem to be strongly connected to such engagement. The videos demonstrated a flexible filmic structure containing different cultural and aesthetic elements. Despite the positive acceptance of the activity and its contribution to engagement, most of the videos included scanty conceptual explanations on the experiments, with phenomenological descriptions prevailing over the establishment of an adequate correlation with changes at the atomic-molecular level. Nevertheless, this represents one of the advantages of this strategy because it creates learning opportunities, particularly involving discussions on misconceptions from the standpoint of chemistry. Thus, it is possible to connect the initial engagement in promoting reflections that can continue over a long time.