Uni by YouTube

Greg Whitby's Bluyonder considers the recent decision of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) to have its own YouTube channel:

The University of NSW recently launched its own channel on YouTube – the first Australian institution to do so.  It’s no surprise given most students entering university today have virtually grown up online.

While it’s a great marketing strategy, it recognises where today’s students are.  Although the channel will broadcast some lecturers in an attempt to reach potential students, it captures the ubquitous nature and popularity of Web 2.0. 

This is the democratisation of knowledge - no longer contained within lecture theatres or classrooms but shared.  Learning becomes accessible, anywhere, anytime.  Transportable, transparent, relevant and exciting.

The University of NSW is to be applauded but we still lag behind. iTunes has developed a store dedicated to education called University. It’s ‘the campus that never sleeps’ -  allowing universities across the US to upload audio/video lectures, interviews, debates, presentations for students - any age, anywhere.  And it’s free. It’s astounding and exciting to think that a cohort of students and teachers from a school western Sydney can watch a biology lecture from MIT.

The challenge for us is to open our K-12 classrooms to a new audience - to share knowledge as professionals and to showcase quality learning and teaching as we move from isolated classrooms to a connected global learning environment.

Read more here. I agree with Greg's comments.  In the Law School at QUT, which is where I work, we have for some posted audio recordings of our classes online so that students can download and listen to their classes anywhere, anytime.  But we post these classes only on our Learning Management System (LMS) - previously OLT now Blackboard - which means that they can be accessed and downloaded only by our current students.  What UNSW and others institutions in the US are doing is fundamentally different because they are making their classes available to the world, not just those students who have paid for the privilege to attend that institution.  I don't know what QUT's position would be if I wanted to place my lectures online for anyone to watch and/or listen to, but I would like to think I would be able to do so. 

I believe that opening up the classroom to a much broader audience has rich educational potential as it widens the perspectives and discussion that can had on the topic being taught or considered by the teacher and the students.  In a small way I've noticed this with a blog I have run with John Swinson for an LLM unit we teach - Legal Regulation of the Internet.  In  addition to our students posting comments to the blog, we have got comments from people all over the world.  Often these comments approach the issues in a different, but very relevant and interesting, way from the students in our class.  Thus it is enriches the class debate and discussion and as a result the broader educational experience.  Posting whole classes online can only take this further.

Therefore, I'd suggest that posting classes on YouTube (or elsewhere on the internet) is not just Web 2.0 trendiness or good marketing for the institution, and that there are in fact sound pedagogical reasons for doing so.

Comments

[JP]

Kudos to UNSW for making a great move. Hopefully other universities will follow suit. I think if the lectures from every law school were available to me online, my decision on which school to attend would have been better informed, particularly if they include assessment expectations.