[April 10, 2010] YouTube's higher calling: Higher ed: More colleges, including UH, are opting to put campus material online Tweet Apr 10, 2010 (Houston Chronicle - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- When Russell Geanangel first began teaching, any student who wanted to hear about enthalpy diagrams or the size of atoms had to come to class. Now, they can click on YouTube. "This is the wave of the future," said Geanangel, a tech-savvy chemistry professor at the University of Houston who began putting lectures on the video channel last year. No longer just for piano-playing cats and the pranksters next door, YouTube is growing up as higher education moves into social media. Last year the company launched YouTube EDU -- at www.youtube.com/edu -- to provide a home base for universities from around the world to post lectures, speeches, conferences and athletic events. Obadiah Greenberg, strategic partner manager for YouTube Edu, said the higher education site consolidates about 64,000 videos from 300 universities. Some are aimed at attracting potential students. Others show goofy moments in student life or climactic athletic events. But Greenberg said most showcase academic work. "What our community (of people watching videos) finds the most interesting is lectures, seminars and speeches," he said. "They want a sense of what it's like to get an education from these institutions." YouTube EDU, iTunes U and other video-sharing services linked to higher education are still in their infancy. While some of the nation's biggest and best-known universities have created YouTube channels, most schools -- there are more than 2,600 four-year universities in the U.S. -- have yet to do so. Great growth expected Today's participants are early adopters of a trend predicted to grow dramatically over the next few years, much as university-related blogs and Twitter feeds have exploded in number. "The online piece is growing double-digit every year," said Marshall Schott, assistant vice president for instructional support and outreach at UH. For now, individual faculty members decide whether to participate. "For the most part, people have been adventurous," said Nyleva Corley, manager of Web and social media for the University of Texas at Austin. The videos are an extension of the social media schools use to engage prospective students and faculty members, as well as alumni and those already on campus: blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. The videos are an extension of the social media schools use to engage prospective students and faculty members, as well as alumni and those already on campus: blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. "We kept hearing from our students: 'If you want to communicate with us, it's best to go through Facebook or Twitter,'aEUR%" said Kent Best, executive director of news and communications at Southern Methodist University. "They said, 'We don't pay much attention to the e-mails you send us.'aEUR%" In an age of iPhone apps, YouTube is almost old school. Still, someone is watching -- Stanford University has logged more than 1.3 million views of its videos, including more than 2,000 for a lecture on particle physics. More than 35,000 people have checked out a clip of President Barack Obama at a Duke-Georgetown basketball game, posted by Duke University. A two-part interview with UH Chancellor Renu Khator about the push to become a Tier One research university has drawn almost 3,000 viewers. Some of Geanangel's Fundamentals of Chemistry classes, on the other hand, have been watched by fewer than 200 people. Ideally, he said, those are students who heard the lecture in the classroom and want a review. "An unintended consequence is it encourages those students who don't want to go to class not to come," he said. "That's the biggest drawback." Students can't ask questions if they're not in class, he said. And e-mail isn't always a good substitute for personal interaction. 'Same' class experience Some classroom lectures on YouTube Edu are simply videotapes of the classroom, with the professor at a podium. Geanangel uploads audio and slides, using a digital tablet to write additional notes and formulas. "The aim is to give the student the same experience they would have in the class lecture, assuming they don't look at me, and they just look at the screen," he said. In a way, the videos are a throwback to the days when universities put their classes on local public access or PBS stations. The difference is that relatively few people saw those programs. "With YouTube, whenever you want to access the content, it's there," Schott said. As schools make it easier for faculty to participate, more classroom presentations will be available at the click of a mouse, allowing people all over the world a peek into a college classroom. "This allows anyone with an Internet connection to get an education," Greenberg said. "We have a worldwide audience of self-learners who are looking for great content." [email protected] To see more of the Houston Chronicle, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.HoustonChronicle.com. Copyright (c) 2010, Houston Chronicle Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]