This is a comment on the movement to offer university instructional content to the public. The experiences generating this comment were pretty much random events, but perhaps the co-occurence of such events during a given day imply something other than randomness.I learned today that UC Berkeley has decided to offer the content of some courses on YouTube. The course that caught my attention was SIMS 141 which included a lecture (actually more of a Q&A) by Sergey Brin. Several major institutions have been offering course content for a few years now, but the YouTube approach is new.At one level the high tech approach is amusing – in several of the Berkeley courses, the visual presentation consists of college profs lecturing and writing on the chalk board. It was the combination of YouTube and chalk board that struck me as unusual. I can’t say I have watched a chalk board based lecture in many years. Brilliant scholars aside, perhaps the local tech folks ought to focus on improving the lecture supplements offered to the students sitting in the seats before streaming the content to the world.I don’t know what I think of the move made by several major institutions to offer the content of lectures courses for general consumption. Because I am teaching Intro Psych this semester, I have been listening to Intro Psych lectures available from several major institutions. My guess is that most students listening to these lectures and the lectures of my colleagues would be unable to associate the lecture with the institution. Perhaps this is more about Intro Psych than the scholarly expertise of the instructors. Perhaps leading national scholars in visual perception are no better at explaining topics in abnormal pscyhology than my colleagues.I have a different opinion of the UC Berkeley SIMS (internet search, information seeking) course. The individuals presenting and the focus of the course are unique and not available on most campuses.The University of Minnesota College of Public Health presented at the Beyond Boundaries conference and outlined their approach to podcasting/vodcasting. What they describe is probably a better model for offering resources to the public. They offer short pieces on specific topics, profile graduate students in the program, and provide access the invited lectures. They have invested production resources in creating these products. To me, this is a better approach to generating resources with broad appeal.So – offering information to the public is great, but who is the intended public and what is it that this public is expected to do with this information? What if introductory content is of general interest, but the institutions offering content do no better job in presenting this information than most other institutions? What if advanced content is done particularly well at some institutions, but the audience for this content is mostly at these same institutions.If this trend continues (more institutions making more courses available), I predict that some system for locating courses, perhaps even lectures on specific topics, that are especially informative, creative, or motivating will emerge. It will probably look like some type of iTunesU Digg mashup.
