Video courses from different areas of study taught at University of Berkeley are now available for free on YouTube, dramatically expanding the number of students “attending the classes”.

The Berkeley channel, inaugurated last month and available at http://www.youtube.com/ucberkeley, is a premiere for both the Californian University and YouTube, according to Jordan Hoffner, head of premium content partnerships for the most popular video site on the Web. Berkeley is thus the first campus to make full courses from its library available on YouTube.

Berkeley’s video offering includes lectures from chemistry, integrative biology and peace and conflict studies. Other clips highlight football games and lunchtime poetry readings by students and visiting scholars.

“These are people who listen because they want to learn- they don’t listen for entertainment,” Professor Richard Muller from the UC Berkeley said, adding that there’s no restriction in viewing the content posted on the University’s channel. Currently, the most popular video is about physics, or, more explicit, about “Physics for Future Presidents”- a short film that deals with how physics is involved in current events.

UC Berkeley’s foray into the Internet video lecturing is not new, the first adventure starting in 2001 as a “webcasts for students” campaign- which in the mean time accumulated more than 4.3 million views.

According to Ben Hubbard, who oversees Berkeley’s YouTube channel in parallel with webcast.berkeley.edu, April 2006 marked the debut of the University’s podcasted lectures on Apple’s iTunes. They are currently available for download.

Christina Maslach, UC Berkeley's vice provost for undergraduate education said in a statement that UC Berkeley will provide on YouTube a public window into university life, academics, events and athletics, which will build on the University’s rich tradition of open educational content for the larger community.