[Air-L] About a potential study on High School student's perception of YouTube videos

[Xanat Meza]

Hello, air members.
In my current job teaching to High School level students, I left several assignments of watching videos and writing brief reports about their content and the impressions the students got from them. The videos were about astronomy and biology, and they either complemented or reviewed content taught in class (online). I am curious about the perception the students had on women scientists (the education we provide them is on the STEM side, so you can imagine most of them are male students); and on animations to explain complex processes (photosynthesis for example). They are over 200 students, so I thought I could do some sort of exploratory/ethnographic research with their data.
However, when I consulted my colleague with whom I teach these classes, he told me the essays were not valid because students of this age (15-16) in this country barely understand English and would not be able to understand videos in English. He admitted that this time, as classes were online, he can not personally assess the students overall comprehension level. It is true that some students mentioned they had difficulty in understanding the videos (I read all their essays), but I noticed that certain aspects of the video (being animated and the speed of talk of the video host for example) made the content easier to understand. 
I am not sure if I did not explain my idea to my colleague clearly, as our backgrounds are very different.  I also still have to talk with my Department Head about my idea. Anyway, in concrete, I would like to ask for suggestions on how to conduct a valuable research with the data we have, or if it would be better to focus in other types of data. 
Regards,
Xanat V. Meza

Ph.D. Kansei, Behavioral and Brain SciencesUniversity of Tsukuba
M.A. Media and Communication
Yeungnam University
B.D. Graphic Communication Design
Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana