Class Act: YouTube Moves Into Education

WASHINGTON Log onto YouTube, and you can watch Richard Muller, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, illustrate how atoms and heat work (via a spot from Toyota's "Moving forward" campaign in which a meteor strikes a Tacoma truck). Actually, log onto YouTube (youtube.com/ucberkeley) and you can watch Muller's entire semester-long course (taught in 2006), thanks to a partnership between Berkeley and Google's video-sharing site.Bringing higher education to the Web in this manner can help both brands, experts say. (Berkeley is considered one of the first to do so. Harvard ran a law course through its extension program on Second Life in 2006.) Berkeley opens the virtual doors of its university to the world at large; YouTube gains the cachet of its association with a prestigious educational brand, and, ideally, attracts an audience beyond viewers interested in watching user-generated videos."For YouTube, it further legitimizes their role in society because it is not just for idiots who want to put their latest party video online," says Andy Bateman, CEO of Interbrand, New York. "It is about real substantial, useful interactive content. Berkeley is the first, so run the camera forward five years when every university is posting their curriculum and the students are spending even more time on YouTube. You have more eyeballs for more time being engaged in YouTube's content, and that has to be good for business."Right now, the partnership agreement prevents YouTube from placing ads on Berkeley's pages, which also give viewers a window into other parts of the university, such as campus life and events. Berkeley has its own 30-second promotional video, called "You see Berkeley," on its YouTube page.The content also works as a marketing tool to help strengthen alumni ties and expand community outreach. (Currently, the university has more applicants than it can admit.) "You can put together a one-minute spot that markets the university in a certain way, but there is nothing like showing the real thing," says Ben Hubbard, co-manager of Berkeley's Webcast program, part of the division of undergraduate education. As a former CBS-TV producer who is now Berkeley's executive director of public affairs, Dan Mogulof likes the fact that the partnership allows Berkeley to bypass the media and speak directly to its target audience. "I think there is a shared impression among institutions of higher education that the mainstream media are not interested in extolling the virtues of universities, and are more interested in confrontation and controversy," Mogulof says. "Instead of relying on the kindness of journalistic strangers, we can speak directly to our key constituencies, which is the broad public, alumni and prospective students who also use YouTube."This is not Berkeley's first venture into making its content available to a wider audience. It launched a podcasting partnership for courses with iTunesU (www.apple.com/education/itunesu) last year and followed with a video effort with Google in August 2006. But because Google video can be static and Berkeley couldn't make changes to its page, YouTube became a more viable alternative once Google purchased the video-sharing service in October 2006.Hubbard says that after a year of the Google partnership, Berkeley had 1.3 million page views and 700,000 downloads. Within three weeks of launching the YouTube partnership last month, Berkeley had 1.3 million views on the three channels it runs on its page. "When you really boil it down, the size of the YouTube audience is mind-blowing and it shows how hungry people are for this type of content," he says.Obadiah Greenberg, YouTube's strategy partner manager, who is a former manager of Berkeley's Webcast program, sees the partnership as a way to expand the video-sharing site's mission to entertain, empower and inform. "What's interesting is that YouTube is an open platform that is whatever our community makes of it. Higher education's application is just the latest manifestation of that."Once you get Muller talking about his physics class, it's hard to get him to stop. He typically has 500 students each semester, but YouTube has changed that number to many thousands. There are also some subtle differences. "The students that listen to me are students who want to learn, otherwise they wouldn't bother," he says. "And for no additional effort on my part, I am getting a lot of positive reinforcement."Muller thinks the partnership is also a useful tool to combat some of the negative perceptions that have built up over the years about Berkeley, like the fear that the classes are not small and intimate. "Many people ... would not want to come to Berkeley for fear of what these large classes are like," he says. "But when they watch my lectures in front of 500 students, many people are shocked to discover how intimate that setting can be. This helps undo some of the prejudices."And Muller is not above conducting a little marketing of his own. His new book, named after his physics course, will be published early next year by W.W. Norton & Company.In the end, Interbrand's Bateman sees the partnership as a representation of YouTube's evolution. "You can think of YouTube as a site that people post video to," he says. "The next step is where broadcasters can broadcast their content. Why not ... bring very educational material online? The best way to create learning is not to push people through a curriculum activity, but to really engage them. And the ability to engage people in a massive debate to improve learning is going to find its commercial application."What's next—college degrees through YouTube?Wendy Melillo is an Adweek contributing writer and an assistant professor in the School of Communication at American University. She can be reached at wmelillo@adweek.com.

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Class Act: YouTube Moves Into Education

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