Youtube college lectures

April 22, 2008 10:46 AM

Help me find longer lectures on Youtube. Is there a browsable index of what's on posted on Youtube (something more detailed and descriptive than the left sidebar on the homepage, the channels page, or the few video links that show up on any given page)? I'd like to find something to watch on my ipod at the gym, something to hold my interest for fifteen to sixty minutes, but not videos of laughing babies, music videos or teenagers beating up each other. Doing a search for "university lectures" leads me to the several UC Berkeley lecture series and the inspiring lecture from the fellow with pancreatic cancer. Is it possible to move beyond that into other college lectures or even multipart courses (arts or science), discussions, longer films, the unexpected? How do I find them?
posted by bbranden1 to education (22 comments total)

You can download various college lectures and other educational tools from iTunes U, inside iTunes itself. I've been watching some of the physics lectures from MIT.
posted by fiercekitten at 10:52 AM on April 22

It's not YouTube but you might be interested in MIT World:

MIT World™ is a free and open site that provides on-demand video of significant public events at MIT [such as lectures and panel discussions]. MIT World's video index contains more than 500 videos.

posted by yz at 10:54 AM on April 22

If you use Google Video's advanced search (which searches YouTube), you can specify duration and only search videos that are longer than 20 minutes. Searching for "lecture" with this restriction currently returns 11000 results.
posted by Partial Law at 10:59 AM on April 22

While not answering your question as it relates to YouTube be sure to check out these previous threads for online video lectures -- 1000 Science Lecture Videos || Free Science and Video Lectures Online || Good times, good times! || TED Talks || Perspectives.
posted by ericb at 10:59 AM on April 22

Also -- Harvard@Home.
posted by ericb at 11:02 AM on April 22

@GoogleTalks might be of interest... basically lectures by authors and other similar types
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:03 AM on April 22

Here's a couple university opencourseware type links just off the top of my head.

Standford
Princeton
MIT
UC Berkeley
Univ. California "TV"

In terms of full course materials/lectures, MIT Opencourseware is probably your best bet. They have the largest selection of courses, and a good range of materials.
posted by s01110011 at 11:03 AM on April 22

^ I can't speel standford...
posted by s01110011 at 11:04 AM on April 22

I really like Philip Tagg's strange and unusual lectures on youtube. He's a professor of semiotics and ethnomusicology at the University of Montreal and has very interesting insights into culture wars, communication and the media, and other random topics.
posted by cachondeo45 at 11:11 AM on April 22

The search term you're missing is Zizek!
posted by clockwork at 11:16 AM on April 22

UCTV on youtube http://youtube.com/user/uctelevision -- with almost 2K videos.
posted by AwkwardPause at 11:25 AM on April 22

UNC lectures (and other events) on YouTube can be found on this channel.
posted by needled at 11:47 AM on April 22

Have you looked at TED Talks? I believe you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
posted by Arthur Dent at 12:28 PM on April 22

This are great answers. Thanks you very much! Any more ideas out there?
posted by bbranden1 at 12:38 PM on April 22

These presentations by James Randi are pretty interesting.
posted by Oriole Adams at 1:05 PM on April 22

Fora.tv has lots of lectures about pretty much everything - from Ani DeFranco on file sharing to a talk about the history of national identities in Europe to a talk about the life of an Hindu farmer to Amy Richards and Dan Savage talking about why abstinence education is does not work.
posted by nooneyouknow at 5:38 PM on April 22

While TED talks aren't lectures in the strictest academic sense, they are still intellectually valuable and well worth checking out.
posted by oxford blue at 9:47 PM on April 22

UChannel aggregates both audio and video lectures from a number of universities.

They're not free online, but your local library probably has lots of lectures from The Teaching Company.

I listen to and watch a lot of lectures. For what it's worth, I've blogged about some of my favorites. Another favorite was the two semester class on non-violence taught at Berkeley by Michael Nagler. His lectures are sometimes rambling, but it's an interesting subject that you're not likely to hear much about in mainstream media.
posted by xulu at 5:10 PM on April 23

you should totally get physics for future presidents. incredibly interesting. it looks like the only video in is real, so you may need to go mp3. good luck.
posted by ncc1701d at 6:37 PM on April 23

Thanks, Lifehacker visitors!
posted by bbranden1 at 3:09 PM on April 24

Here are a couple of suggestions:

First here is a list of intelligent YouTube video collections which includes video collections from good media outlets and universities:

http://www.oculture.com/2008/03/youtubesmartvideos.html

Next, here's a big list 200 courses from top-notch universities that you can download to your iPod for free.

http://www.oculture.com/2007/07/free_podcasts_of_university_courses_75_courses_and_growing.html
posted by dhcolman at 11:35 AM on April 25

Sorry, I should have used real links above. Here they are:

60 Smart Video Collections on YouTube

Free Online Courses from Great Universities (Download as Podcasts)
posted by dhcolman at 11:44 AM on April 25