An intriguing class is being taught at Pitzer College this fall on YouTube.

Alexandra Juhasz, a media studies professor is offering the course about YouTube and how it impacts art and culture, and the class is filmed and uploaded to YouTube, so anyone in the world can observe the direction of the course.   Discussion will be presented via YouTube and students can post video responses to class discussion as part of the class.

The professor points out, “That’s the whole charm of the class. . .It’s about it, and on it.”

Unexpectedly for the professor, the course has gotten a lot of media attention, so even though it is just getting off the ground, it is garnering a lot of scrutiny(that shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise!)   And it is interesting watching the class learn ALONG with the professor how to manage the class and to keep up with the content and the attention. 

 That itself seems like an interesting experiment.   

The course sounds fairly student driven,  and it is good to see a university course engaging with the deeper sociological discussions about how these web 2.0 tools are affecting our culture or whether or not they are.  And it’s interesting to see how the community of the class is building as you watch the class progress; for example, at the end of the video below, you can see how this will bring this class together as a community.  I also wonder how the scrutiny and attention will change the class or inhibit or encourage students’ voices as they move through the semester. 

I could see a similar approach applied in a high school media or Sociology class, for example, not only to YouTube but to other web 2.0 tools as well.  (This would require students having access to the tool involved, obviously, which is problematic in many schools.)

Fascinating experiment.   The tag for the course is MS135 or they have set up a YouTube group if you want to see the class videos and responses, (as well as other YouTube responses to their course).

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Bb_cVj8_fD4" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]