Youtube. Friend or foe in higher ed?

An recent off-hand remark by an IT collegue at CQUniversity got me thinking about youtube. In passing they mentioned that youtube traffic represents a large portion of the data crossing our internet links which, of course, the university has to pay for and this cost is huge to say the least. I’d recently come across some research where the researchers did some in depth analysis of the types of youtube videos that were being accessed in a University environment and the result was, to me, somewhat of a surprise with video categories such as comedy, entertainment and music alone making up nearly 60% of the traffic measured (Gill et.al 2007). With terabytes of youtube traffic crossing our internet links every year the cost of youtube to the organization is substantial and our IT department is to be commended by not reacting in a way that other organizations have, by banning youtube traffic all together as indicated in this Wall Street Journal article. The following paragraph from Wikipedia suggests that the problem is only going to escalate.

“In August 2006, The Wall Street Journal published an article revealing that YouTube was hosting about 6.1 million videos (requiring about 45 terabytes of storage space), and had about 500,000 user accounts.^[5] As of April 9, 2008, a YouTube search returns about 83.4 million videos and 3.75 million user channels.^[6][7] As of Q1 2008, YouTube is not profitable, with its revenues being noted as “immaterial” by Google in a regulatory filing.^[4] Its bandwidth costs are estimated at approximately $1 million a day.^[4] It is estimated that in 2007, YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000, and that around 13 hours of video are uploaded every minute.^[8][9][10] “

Given the unprecedented popularity of youtube it would seem logical to leverage that popularity in order to better engage the students with their university courses. Student engagement is an important part of teaching and learning in higher education and according to some research  by Illinois State University there are three critical factors influencing student engagement. They are:

• enrollment in classes using technology;
• ability to deal with other students; and
• satisfaction with grade compensation.

( Farmer-Dougan 2008 )

Given the obvious popularity of youtube and the importance of engaging students in new and interesting ways how can we, and why would we utilize youtube in a higher education setting? I suggest the why is simply because it’s easy to use, free and popular. Some might say trendy. How to use it is a more complex question in that it really depends on the context of the course and the inventiveness of the instructor. What I find strange is that we have this new and popular method of delivering content and a university such as UC Berkely chooses to reproduce the existing paradigm. An example of old wine in new skins.

as opposed to

So we have a new medium that is hugely popular, easy to use and is likely to be familiar with our student cohort. Sounds great but there are some drawbacks such as copyright, bandwidth etc or perhaps the students perceive youtube to be for entertainment and don’t really want our intrusion into their space. It will be interesting to see how the youtube/university relationship evolves over the coming years.

Valeri Farmer-Dougan, K. M. (2008). “Examining Student Engagement at Illinois State University: An exploratory Investigation.”   Retrieved 25/8/2008, from http://www.teachtech.ilstu.edu/resources/teachTopics/examEngage.php.

Phillipa Gill, M. A., Zongpeng Li, Anirban Mahanti (2007) YouTube traffic characterization: A view from the edge.  Volume,  DOI:

Situated Learning.

Fitting in with my recent work with Online Learning Communities is Situated Learning that contends that learning takes place in the same context in which it is applied. A work colleague recently completed a project where a traditionally “dull” course was given a context in which the students could relate what they were learning to a “real” situation. This lead to a far greater level of engagement by the students and the results they achieved were vastly improved over previous offerings of the same course. According to Lave (1991).

“Lave argues that learning as it normally occurs is a function of the activity, context and culture in which it occurs (i.e., it is situated). This contrasts with most classroom learning activities which involve knowledge which is abstract and out of context. Social interaction is a critical component of situated learning — learners become involved in a “community of practice” which embodies certain beliefs and behaviors to be acquired. As the beginner or newcomer moves from the periphery of this community to its center, they become more active and engaged within the culture and hence assume the role of expert or old-timer. Furthermore, situated learning is usually unintentional rather than deliberate.”

Herrington et. al. (2000) have a model to use as a guide for developing online learning environments with a view to integrating situated learning. Its key elements are:
•    Authentic context that reflects the way that knowledge will be used.
•    Authentic activities.
•    Access to expert performances and the modeling of processes.
•    Multiple roles and perspectives.
•    Collaborative construction of knowledge.
•    Reflection.
•    Articulation.
•    Coaching and scaffolding.
•    Authentic assessment.

Keeping in mind everyone’s opinions are different based on their prior experience and my prior experience comes from the practical application of technology in real world situations. I’m astounded at how learners are expected to learn while detached from the situation where that learning will be applied. The problem I’m currently analyzing is how to bring integrate situated learning to a degree program as opposed to a single course. With a single course you can introduce role plays, simulations etc to set the context in which the learner can learn in a situated manner but how do you add this level of enculturation to an entire degree program with a topically diverse subset of courses?

The way I’m leaning at the moment is to take advantage of the industry practitioners who have volunteered to assist with the online learning network or community of practice. With these folk divulging real world situations that are currently occurring within their professional lives and describing there experiences and actions in particular scenarios I’m hoping that the students will at least get a glimpse of how the topics they are currently learning will fit into their chosen profession once they enter the work force.

Herrington (2000). Towards a New Tradition of Online Instruction: Using Situated Learning Theory to Design Web-Based Units. ASCILITE.

Lave, J. (1990). “Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation.”

Learning theories.

I work for the Curriculum Design and Development unit at Central Queensland University. I come from a technology background so I’m endeavoring to learn more about the curriculum design process and how people actually learn. As part of this learning journey I’m going to broadly write about learning theories in order to get this stuff straight in my head as I find a lot of stuff written about learning theory ambiguous and over analyzed. I’d appreciate comments as I expect my perceptions of some or all of these things to be wrong.

•  Behaviorism is based on a new behavior being repeated until learned. Positive behaviors are rewarded while negative behaviors are punished. Behaviorists are concerned with measuring the new behaviors.
• Cognitivism is the thought process behind the behavior. Changes in behavior are indicative of changes in though processes. Brain-based learning.
• Constructivism is where we construct our knowledge based on our experiences. A teacher in this context will seek to guide the learner to build their own knowledge within the confines of their person.
• Social constructivism argues that the optimal learning environment is one where a dynamic interaction between instructors, learners and tasks provides an opportunity for learners to create their own truth due to the interaction with others. (Wikipedia)

Loosely based on these theories are:

• Objectivism. Reality is external and objective. Knowledge is through experiences.
• Pragmatism. Reality is interpreted. Knowledge is negotiated through experience and thinking.
• Interpretivism. Reality is internal. Knowledge is constructed.

Real life learning is complex and non-linear and modern learning through technology adds another complexity into the mix. Incorporating technology into learning theory is connectivism. Based on chaos theory where its assumed that every thing is connected to everything else ( I like the butterfly analogy where a butterfly flaps it’s wings in the Amazon and causes a cyclone in Australia ), connectivism is saying the conduits to knowledge are more important than the actual knowledge which fits with my experience, at least my professional experience anyway. With technical tasks in a fast, ever-changing world I’ve found its more efficient to know where the information is than know the information. Connectivism states that new information is continually being acquired and the ability to distinguish important from unimportant information is vital.

According to George Siemens the principles of contructivism are:

• Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
• Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
• learning may reside in non-human appliances.
• Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known.
• nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
• Ability to see connections between fields, ideas and concepts is a core skill.
• Currency (up to date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
• Decision making is itself a learning process. choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality.

Some things that I find fascinating about connectivism are the implications in other areas of life like the recognition that complete knowledge of a problem or system can’t reside in a single person therefor diverse teams of varying viewpoints are critical for more completely understanding ideas. Web2.0 is a connectivist concept. George Seimens says that the pipe or conduit to knowledge is more important than the content of the pipe. The ability to learn what we need to know tomorrow is more important than what we know today.

George Seimens ( A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. http://www.itdl.org/journal/jan_05/Jan_05.pdf#page=7)

Stephen Downes (http://www.downes.ca/)