UC Berkeley announced on Wednesday that it is posting entire course lectures and special events on YouTube for anyone to view, thereby fulfilling its mission statement as an institute of public education. UCLA must follow suit.
Berkeley has become the first university to offer full courses available to view on YouTube, with over 300 hours of video content on their channel at
youtube.com/ucberkeley.
It is refreshing to see a large public institution take the initiative and come up with more innovative ways of fulfilling a part of their mission.
Part of the UC mission statement is to provide “public service, which (is) shaped and bounded by the central pervasive mission of discovering and advancing knowledge.”
And since UCLA is a public institution, the point has been raised in the past that our university should find ways to open up its resources to a greater portion of the public, not simply to the current students who attend.
Berkeley’s YouTube channel allows not only the people of California access to the higher education lectures at an elite university, it enhances Berkeley’s worldwide stature, as one professor has claimed to have had people in 72 countries listen to or watch his lectures.
Using today’s technology to provide such a service helps Berkeley play a larger role within the global community, an important facet of advancing knowledge as stated in the UC mission statement.
The idea is not new, nor did it suddenly arise.
Berkeley had previously used Google to post videos, which had been viewed 1.3 million times and downloaded 700,000 times before being shifted to YouTube.
While UCLA already has some podcasted and streaming video lectures available to students, this school needs to recognize and emulate the steps taken by Berkeley to better disseminate education and public resources to a much larger community.
YouTube is not only a public medium with the potential to allow anyone access to UCLA lectures. It is quickly becoming the visual medium of popular preference, a status that Google once assumed, prompting Berkeley to shift its content to YouTube.
While some may fear a decline in class attendance with students electing to simply watch lectures online, professors at Berkeley have used different methods to address these concerns, such as more engaging discussions with the students throughout their lecture presentations and pop quizzes.
Students at UCLA are smart enough to realize they are paying thousands of dollars in tuition and should make the most of the opportunity to interact with professors in class and during office hours.
Discussion sessions are also an important addition which makes a UC education richer in delivery.
Most students who have missed class have firsthand knowledge that, in the process of listening to a podcast or looking at a streaming video online, a sense of interaction and live engagement of the discussion is lost.
This move is not meant to substitute the in-class teaching that occurs, it is meant to diversify and deepen the quality of information available to the public.
Furthermore, Berkeley posts a diverse range of content in addition to lectures, including sports clips and poetry readings by students.
UCLA must organize a way to broadcast itself to the world to showcase its accomplishments and thriving academic community.