Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/55943
how a topic is taught at MIT or Berkeley—there's no need for them to restrict themselves to only the teaching at their own institutions. They have the opportunity to sit in on courses taught by instructors who are the best in their fields—the Nobel Laur eates. When I look at the comments to the videos of some lectures, I'll see some students write, "This really gives me a fuller understanding of this topic." Students are realizing that there's more than one way to teach something. Can business schools gauge how many people their videos are reaching and where they're located? Some of it is anecdotal, coming from the schools themselves. For example, one professor at Berkeley teaches a popular course called "Physics for President." He told me that he has received messages from people in 80 different countries. We also offer tools to help schools gain a sense of the geographies that people are visiting from. Do most videos on YouTube EDU come from the sciences? It's not surprising that we have a lot of material from comput- er science, physics, and engineering—these disciplines were the early adopters. But we're seeing more from the humani- ties. Yale recently began providing courseware in literature and philosophy, and Harvard put up its famous justice series, which was also broadcast on WGBH of Boston. How many business schools have channels? There are approximately ten U.S. business schools listed on YouTube EDU, with many more European business school channels. This does not count channels that have business school content mixed into the main channel, which is ideal to build a large audience. Because engineering schools were early adopters of Webcasting, they have the most content. But business schools are probably the most prolific, given their strong brand identities, marketing savvy, and video production budgets. What kind of content attracts the most viewers? Business content dealing with finance, leadership, manage- ment, and entrepreneurship are popular, indicating a hunger among viewers to improve their workplace skills. If I were running a business school's online media program, I would focus on a series of short lessons featuring local and visiting experts on these topics. Do you see a future at YouTube EDU where viewers could audit not just a course, but a full degree program? I love the idea of adding more curation to our content, 26 BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2010 Viewers get the best idea about what it's like to go to a certain university when they learn from the school, not just about it. so that viewers could follow a guided curriculum. But we would have to work closely with our partner schools, because educators have the strongest sense of what a guided curriculum should look like. However, we did do something lightweight along those lines last summer. We offered a series of blog posts called YouTube Summer School, which included courses on sub- jects such as art, physics, and biology. We've also seen third parties doing this. For example, Grockit, an online learning community, has started using YouTube EDU videos in its lessons. Another organization, Academic Earth, uses You- Tube videos in this manner. Because of YouTube's open format, people can do this type of thing on their own sites if they choose to. Have you hit any obstacles along the way in YouTube EDU's development? If I do see an obstacle, it's reaching the schools that are still realizing the potential of online video in their classrooms. However, new schools come on board every day, working with their faculty members to develop the infrastructure to produce more video content. Some schools are still turning the ship, but it's happening. What trends in online video content should business schools prepare for? One exciting trend I've seen comes from an educator named Salmon Khan, who has been very interesting to watch. He started the Khan Academy in his own home, creating short tutorials on various subjects. To date, he has produced well over 1,000 videos on YouTube. To me, this is an interesting trend that takes best advantage of YouTube—the viewer can isolate a particular ten-minute topic, rather than having to work through an hour and a half video to find a solution. The Khan Academy shows that it's not just schools that can reach out directly to worldwide audiences—individual teachers can as well. There are teachers who will embrace that and those who won't. But for those who do, the ben- efits are tremendous. ■ z