a scrutiny of the role of youtube as a learning tool in classroom for efl college students

In the digital age, the advent of new technological tools including youtube can contribute to bringing innovation and creativity to language classrooms. exploring the capabilities, challenges, and strategies to use different technologies in the educational process in order to find the appropriate tool is of high value. to this end, the present study aims to investigate the students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of using youtube videos and the strategies and challenges of using them in the classrooms. 100 college students in the english departments of different universities in iran such as birjand, ferdowsi, and allameh tabataba’i were recruited to participate in the study. all students had 3 or more years of study experience in academia. they were asked to fill out a ten-item questionnaire developed by fadhil abbas and ali qassim (2020). the questionnaire was in likert format and each item was answered as ‘agree’, ‘neutral’, or ‘disagree’. then, in order to examine the strategies and challenges of using youtube, some participants were invited to attend the interview section. a semi-structured interview was conducted and the data collected were transcribed verbatim. the data gathered through the questionnaire and the interview were respectively analyzed using spss software and thematic analysis. the results of the study showed that students perceive youtube as an effective tool for learning that can improve different language skills and components, especially listening, speaking, grammar and vocabulary. they also believed that youttube must be utilized in the classroom and it can even take the role of the teacher. in the end, challenges and strategies to use youtube in the classroom are discussed thoroughly. the findings of this research study bear some crucial implications for teachers, teacher trainers, and digital material developers.