Effect of Videos Embedded in Online Course on Climate Change Awareness and Mitigation Behavior

Tackling climate change requires strong cooperation from all countries. With the Paris Agreement, countries have formulated policies to address climate change. To be consistent with national mitigation policies, climate change education is particularly important, especially for young people. Educators effectively implementing climate change education in the absence of in-depth knowledge about climate change is of paramount importance. This study applied a new climate change educational program; embedded 11 climate change videos in an online course, C programming, cluster sampling was employed to select participants; 51 students took part in the four-week experiment, using a single group repeated measures experimental design. There are four key hypotheses: if climate change videos embedded in online courses, there will be an improvement in climate change awareness and mitigation behavior; there will be measurable gender effects; effects will be retained; and retention will vary with gender. The results showed that the climate change videos significantly enhanced student climate change awareness and mitigation behavior; no significant difference between the immediate post-test and the later retention tests, indicating that the treatment was effective; no significant difference between males and females in climate change awareness or mitigation behavior. The research demonstrated that integrating climate change videos into online courses, even those seemingly unrelated to environmental topics, can effectively enhance students’ climate change awareness and inspire them to take mitigation actions. This approach can be used in other online courses to help cultivate a more environmentally conscious generation, which is crucial for addressing the global challenge of climate change.