The Interfolio Blog

In another major move toward incorporating uses for social media into the world of higher education, YouTube launched a page Wednesday that pulls together videos from over 100 universities and colleges nationwide. The page, called YouTube EDU, allows viewers to easily access campus tours, free lectures and classes, sporting events, news and other content.

While YouTube isn’t the first site to bring academic video content together online (Academic Earth has been around since 2008), we expect it will likely become the largest and most comprehensive collection of academic video content, especially because the site allows a university to have its own channel, and allows users to narrow searches to just the EDU area, making it a great resource for those looking for open course information and expanded information about a particular institution.

With more and more universities publishing classroom lectures online, we are curious to see how the debate around information sharing and privacy/content rights will play out. MIT has led this charge with the OpenCourseWare initiative, and they have over 800 videos available on the new YouTube page already. With many other universities following suit, we imagine we’ll begin to hear more about the pros and cons of such an open environment.

We also anticipate that many schools will need to develop or reconsider guidelines around information sharing and online content distribution for faculty and students. Since this field is relatively new, we’d like to hear from our blog community about how your university guides (or doesn’t) faculty and staff on how open or closed courses and lectures are for sharing online, and what your thoughts are on how this will or should develop. Are their dangers in new channels like YouTube EDU, or is this an exciting new way to connect with faculty and widen higher ed horizons?