Friday, October 05, 2007 8:47 AM
I have long enjoyed the University of Pennsylvania's Knowledge at Wharton website, with its database of free articles, lectures and podcasts covering everything from real estate to leadership to business ethics to law and public policy. I have also been struck that beyond the value it provides to the public, it provides the school with an "always-on" location to showcase itself and its faculty. Columbia Business School's Ideas at Work follows a similar path, while perhaps the most provocative new effort is the University of California at Berkeley's joint effort with YouTube.
According to an article this week covering the UC-Berkeley-YouTube website, UC Berkeley first to post full lectures to YouTube:
YouTube is now an important teaching tool at UC Berkeley.
The school announced on Wednesday that it has begun posting entire course lectures on the Web's No.1 video-sharing site.
"UC Berkeley on YouTube will provide a public window into university life, academics, events and athletics, which will build on our rich tradition of open educational content for the larger community," said Christina Maslach, UC Berkeley's vice provost for undergraduate education in a statement.
I would be very curious to know the cost of this joint effort. I really like the idea of the university leveraging YouTube's technology. I often think schools put too much money and effort into recreating the wheel, trying to build online systems themselves when private sector partnerships would be more cost effective and help ensure the site stays current with rapidly changing technological innovations.
In any case, I was particularly struck by the passage accompanying the introductory video on the website:
The University of California, Berkeley is the preeminent public research and teaching institution in the nation. From classic literature to emerging technologies, the curricula of our 130 academic departments span the wide world of thought and knowledge. Supported by the people of California, the university has embraced public service as an essential part of its mission since 1868.
Especially the last part, the university has embraced public service as an essential part of its mission since 1868.
In my mind, public universities exist to serve the public good, educating students for productive lives in their chosen fields. But, they also can serve the public good by informally educating people of all ages, students or not. To do this, they simply need to make readily available the intellectual capital residing in the minds of their faculty and researchers. And, as we are now seeing from universities such as those mentioned above, the technology to facilitate this education has arrived.
With this in mind, I would love to see law schools across the United States and world actively embrace the public service part of their mission by readily sharing the thoughts, ideas and lectures of their own faculty. I realize there are some nascent efforts out there, but I have yet to see any law school move to the vanguard (if I am wrong on this point, please send me bill@blawg.com the links to a law school site on par with the examples I mentioned earlier).
The opportunity for law schools is there. The cost may not be as great as it seems at a glance. Perhaps it just takes a phone call to Google/YouTube to get the ball rolling.
Here's one voice hoping the future reveals law schools leading the charge...