Firstly, some topics are just easier if they can be presented the right format. Geometry will be easier in a format that allows diagrams, compared to an audiobook. Secondly, formats, like websites are often Schelling points, not many serious scientists publish their work as a series of gifs on twitter. Most scientists know this, and so don’t look for a series of gifs on twitter. Then there are affordances, a video of a maths lecture on Youtube, (there are quite a few uni lectures that have been filmed and put on Youtube) might be informative, but have links to lolcats all down the side. If the medium distracts you, you will learn less.
There is also a sense of making use of the medium. Take the medium of videogame. In principle a video game can display an arbitrary pattern of pixels on a screen. However, suppose that the pattern of pixels most suited to learning some topic looks like pages of text. There is no point making a videogame, just to reimplement a document reader in it. So all the people trying to make serious learning resources use text documents. Any video game that is made is full of interactive widgets that aren’t that useful for learning, and is usually targeted at those with too little attention span to read much text.
A lot of the time, I would recommend going for any format in which the information you want is explained by someone who knows the subject and is good at teaching. If the subject is obscure, go for anywhere that you can find the info at all. If distraction is a big problem for you, download the Youtube videos that you intend to watch, unplug your router and then watch them.
Firstly, some topics are just easier if they can be presented the right format. Geometry will be easier in a format that allows diagrams, compared to an audiobook. Secondly, formats, like websites are often Schelling points, not many serious scientists publish their work as a series of gifs on twitter. Most scientists know this, and so don’t look for a series of gifs on twitter. Then there are affordances, a video of a maths lecture on Youtube, (there are quite a few uni lectures that have been filmed and put on Youtube) might be informative, but have links to lolcats all down the side. If the medium distracts you, you will learn less.
There is also a sense of making use of the medium. Take the medium of videogame. In principle a video game can display an arbitrary pattern of pixels on a screen. However, suppose that the pattern of pixels most suited to learning some topic looks like pages of text. There is no point making a videogame, just to reimplement a document reader in it. So all the people trying to make serious learning resources use text documents. Any video game that is made is full of interactive widgets that aren’t that useful for learning, and is usually targeted at those with too little attention span to read much text.
A lot of the time, I would recommend going for any format in which the information you want is explained by someone who knows the subject and is good at teaching. If the subject is obscure, go for anywhere that you can find the info at all. If distraction is a big problem for you, download the Youtube videos that you intend to watch, unplug your router and then watch them.