Contech

As the semester (or trimester) gets under way for most academics in the U.S., faculty are dusting off lectures and preparing their lectures.   The “chalk and talk” lecture format is, of course, still popular.  Yet increasingly universities are opening up the classroom to those outside the enrolled student population and posting digital videos of faculty lectures online.   I’m sure there are more, but here’s a beginning list of resources (from OpenCulture):

Spotlighted Collections

• University of California – Berkeley
  • Arguably the most substantive YouTube collection out there. Features a large number of free courses, plus numerous lectures given by important figures.
• Indian Institute of Technology/Indian Institute of Science
  • Presented by the leading technology institutes in India, this collection features more than 50 free courses. Obviously has a strong technology/engineering bent.
• MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
  • Makes available many of the videos produced as part of MIT’s leading OpenCourseWare initiative.
• Stanford University
  • Newly launched, the collection already features a couple hundred videos, including several free courses.
• UChannel (Princeton)
  • Spearheaded by Princeton, this collection aggregates quality videos coming from a consortium of major universities.

Other University Collections

• Auburn University
  • Hard to separate the intellectual substance from videos that have a more promotional & internal bent. But some of the former is there to be found.
• Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School
  • The videos hosted here look at how the digital world and the law intersect.
• Carnegie Mellon
  • Among other things, this collection features the highly popular video: Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.
• Duke University
  • Individual videos explore the research coming out of one of America’s leading universities.
• Duke’s Fuqua School of Business
  • Similar to Duke’s main collection, but focused on business.
• EGS (The European Graduate School)
  • This European collection features important, contemporary theorists, philosophers, and filmmakers.
• Harvard’s Bok Center
  • A small collection focused on pedagogy.
• Old Dominion
  • A little bit of a hodgepodge but there’s some interesting items in the mix.
• Ohio State
  • So far not an overwhelming use of the medium.
• Oxford University – Saïd Business School
  • Rather internally focused. Not much in the way of educational content per se. But let’s keep our fingers crossed that it eventually offers more.
• Purdue University
  • Again something of a hodgepodge. Wheat and chaff.
• Sonoma State
  • A more intellectually robust collection that features a fair amount of notable lectures.
• The Open University
  • The Open University (OU) is the United Kingdom’s only university dedicated to distance learning.
• Tulane University
  • You can access some of the speeches by esteemed guest speakers here.
• University of Arizona
  • You can sort through a good number of talks here.
• University of California TV
  • UCTV pulls together videos from the campuses, national laboratories, and affiliated institutions of the University of California.
• University of Chicago Press
  • Though still modest in size, the collection features some interesting items.
• University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
  • The collection is substantive on the whole. You will need to sift through the videos to find ones of interest.
• UCSF Memory & Aging Channel
  • UCSF, one of the leading medical schools in the US, features videos that will “educate patients, caregivers and health professionals about the various forms of neurodegenerative diseases.” The diseases covered here include Alzheimer’s, Frontotemporal dementia and Creutzfelt-Jakob
• USC (University of Southern California)
  • Get lectures here, and arts content here.
• Vanderbilt University
  • An eclectic mix.

This sort of opening up of higher education is, as John Seely Brown points out,  part of a larger Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, that began in 2001 when the William and Flora Hewlett and the Andrew W. Mellon foundations jointly funded MIT’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative, which has provided free access to a wide range of courses and other educational materials to anyone who wants to use them.   Just another sign that we’re in the midst of a sea change in higher education.