One of the students, Darren Grose, says YouTube is “a phenomenon that should be studied…You can learn a lot about American culture and just Internet culture in general.”
Pitzer isn’t known as an intellectual powerhouse among small liberal arts schools (although to be honest I am somewhat biased as I went to a rival school, Claremont McKenna). But this may still be just about the most ridiculous class the school, or any school, has ever offered.
The classes are being recorded and, of course, posted on YouTube. Here’s an example class.
In related news, we recently mentioned that Stanford is offering a class on Facebook. But in Stanford’s case, it is a computer science course that teaches students how to create Facebook applications. It’s not a class where students get college credit for sitting around and watching YouTube.
Very interesting concept, of studying the user structure and democracy of youtube…BUT like so many other things in life, this particular concept has been executed, rather crappily, all they do is comment on videos. Sure, maybe the teachers wants insightful comments and what not, but still, rather pointless.
Is this a real college or one of those on tv type deals?
Next semester Mike, let’s you and me offer a class at Pitzer “MySpace Profiles: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly”
Pitzer college is where all my pothead friends went to buy weed. It’s a real college that charges very high tuition. It’s where rich underachievers go to get their degree.
Aw, Michael, no need to get slanderous. Okay, maybe you’re right, seeing as how you definitely know more about this, but don’t let your personal feelings get in the way so much. Objectivity man! Just say the class is crappy
and so is the college! Full of dunderheads 
HA! This is like those old “History of Rock and Roll ” courses that colleges were peddling in the70s and 80s for credit. Think of it as the modern equivalent of the old “Practical Techniques and Practices of Broadcast Media”…
First let me say that I find it funny that we reported about the YouTube class over on Highbrid Nation before it was reported on TechCrunch…and we are a hip hop blog. You guys better get on your game! But this isnt the silliest class Ive heard of. I remember there was a school offering a class on the “poetry of Tupac”. You basically listened to rap music and got graded for it.
So….Strictly 4 mah n*gg@s got you an A? Dayum!
Geez! Aren’t we a little cranky today! First Prince gets the hammer and now some poor little Liberal Arts college? What’s next? Pushing little old ladies out of the line at Safeway?
But seriously folks . . .
This ranks up there with a class I took as a freshman. I had dropped a 5 credit French Language class. As a result I had to fill up my schedule with small 1 credit Philosophy courses to remain full-time. Most were O.K. but one was “Philosophy of Star Trek.” (based on the original series)
It was as bad as you imagine.
sure it may seem silly, and most likely is…but don’t discount the concept in it’s entirety.
there are things to learn from youtube, a lot of things.
you’re just associating/stereotyping youtube with petty juvenile and comedic videos, but beneath that primary…there are hordes of education, real content.
If this is done in a right way, YouTube and other web application can be used to teach worldwide audience, there is nothing wrong with this. I learn Spanish via Podcasting, why not through videos. Maybe at the beginning it looks crappy, but they can couple with online programs and materials and communicate both ways.
and then people wonder why foreigners are taking our jobs….how about some f##$ing calculus people
At first I thought this article was a April Fools joke:) (In September no less)
But it is serious…I guess the only fools in this case are the kids taking this course….
@11
it’s not about brains, it’s about money first.
it has nothing to do with education, it’s primarily a cheaper labor pool elsewhere.
Noone is saying that e-learning is bad, but this course in particular, if you saw the video posted here, consists of students commenting on videos, bringing those comments into class, and giving out the comment and an explanation in one minute. Sure arguing things like demographics in youtube, the recent censorship issues and such might be intellectually rewarding, but what they are doing is going into Shakira videos, 50 cent videos, and commenting on that -_- or at least, that’s what it could easily degenerate into, with such a weak course outline
It’s not really the easiest class Pitzer has ever offered. They also have offered ‘Anarchy and the Internet’, where you’re “supposed” to listen to lectures about anarchists, but your course grade is determined entirely by whether or not you keep up with the “tasks”, which are literally taking old anarchist writings, scanning them, OCR, and publishing basic HTML files so search engines can find them. Turn in one HTML page a week = guaranteed A. No tests, no quizes, no reports, just OCR your semester away.
Not that CMC has too much room to talk – with their amazing Fly Casting class, you can get a couple easy units for standing on the football field and casting into a hula-hoop for 2 hours a week.
I’m proud to say I took advantage of both of those courses – easy way to pad your GPA.
Week 1: Welcome to YouTube – profit or just filth?
Week 2: How to prevent viewing nsfw videos
Week 3: Creating an account – the 10 steps to fast account creation
Week 4: Duncan vs Prince – The YouTube Debates
Week 5: Is LonelyGirl15 Real? Were we all suckers?
Week 6: Should YouTube let people jump around in a video or sit and wait
Week 7: How would you upgrade YouTube
Week 8: YouTube founders fly in on the 767 Jumbo for a discussion of YouTube Green
Week 9: Jobs in YouTube
And yes, Pitzer is a real school, has a couple very good professors, and charges a small fortune for tuition – but is best known in Claremont as the place to get drugs and protect your GPA from the challenging courses at the other schools.
Pitzer College can help student get higher ratings and generate ad revenues.
and then people wonder why United States is freefalling in comparison with the rest of the world when it comes to our educatoin.
Pitzer is to CMC a rival as Tab is a rival to Pepsi or Coke.
CMC ‘99
Well, It’s not pointless. Sitting and watching Youtube could be brillant in film studies, how amateur is turning film theories, cinematography theories upside down. Sitting and watching youtube can challenge metanarratives of big theory. Sitting and watching youtube can prepare a bunch of students as great anthropologist and sociologist if each movie or video studied is placed in context of history, culture, economics, social.
After all, let’s not forget that pop culture is a great part of cultural studies. PLacing Youtube into that syllabus can be enriching, but again, the syllabus needs to be challenging.
Have you ever heard of DECALS? Now thats SILLY… or actually not at all.
Youtube is likely the largest social network, even if a minority have profiles. Most of the architecture is IM and email. I can see a good class coming out of this, why should CS students who have to write compilers have the only theoretical fun?
You could learn a lot from a life like mine.
A liberal frickin shit college, teaching how to use Foolstube? What the hell is this? I think I’m gonna petition USC to offer this in place of their square dancing class for football players. THIS would be ideal for the whole team.
The awesome irony is that the oh-so cherished read/write web sphere could actually -learn- something from a class such as this. But hey, that’s no fun. The fast track is to go ‘angsty teens emoting amidst stolen content’ or whatever stereotypical answer comes up in the magic 2.0 ball.
Would it actually kill us to *think* a little bit. Like with our brains? Or shall we just be as routine as Fox News?
Anyway, the professor comes from a background of film and video theory, documentaries, et al and has focused on various social issues such as AIDS, feminism etc. Her CV is here: http://www.pitz...y/juhasz/cv.htm
I’m curious if she’s published anything on YouTube cultural analysis as of yet. Smart class, regardless of where it’s taught.
I wouldn’t expect this from the tech crowd. It’s so beneath them, apparently. /smirk
Any subject matter is legit for study. It’s not the subject matter it’s the way the work is conducted, the theories mobilized, the relationship to work being done by others in similar fields.
Attacking the supposed academic reputation of the college is a totally illegitimate way to attack an individual class.
Studying a disruptive social, technological and economic phenomenon seems like what people should be doing in academia. Too often academic classes miss the opportunity to relate disciplinary studies to the world at hand.
This is some weak ass criticism. Rather typical for people who never got past taking class or counting things to do any meaningful research.
I went to CMC when it stood for Claremont Men’s College. We didn’t see Pitzer as a rival but as a place to go when the snooty Scripp’s girls wouldn’t give us the time of day.
I would just like to point out, as the HMC grad mentioned, that because the Claremont Colleges are a consortium, students in all five colleges are allowed and often required to take classes at the other schools. Meaning that you, as an intellectually superior CMC student, could have gotten class credit for bullshit classes such as these, and I, because of my major, was required to take 50-75% of my classes at CMC, Pomona, and Scripps. As an intellectually infererior Pitzer student I just can’t fathom how I managed it.
I wonder if the quick judgment–based on one class–is misplaced. Anything that holds student’s attention for learning has value. If it’s watching YouTube, so be it. If we’re ever going to adapt successfully to the super-fast changes wrought by technology, then stimulating curiosity (in almost anything) is far more important that droning through an out-of-date lecture or text. The process of learning in today’s education system seems so hopelessly out of step with today’s environment, I’d like to see a lot more experimentation like this.
And, I’ve learned quite a lot by watching TouTube videos in the “Documentary” and “Educational” sections, thank you very much. At the very least, it provides interesting new perspectives on what we are all-too-ready to call “the truth”.
Mike, I have a different take. Most college is a waste of time anyway. The most important thing I remember about both college and grad school is *how bored* I felt. I was bored practically all the time – it was a kind of depressing boredom. Paul Graham has commented about something similar in one of his essays, so at least it is reassuring to know I was not alone.
The real value of college almost always comes down to the *connections* with other like-minded people you make, and the networks you become part of. The education is incidental, and actually is easily provided in alternate contexts – like as part of work itself. Come to think of it, the power of silicon valley is the power of those human networks, and the power of on-the-job learning.
What of this YouTube class? If it were substituted with a Quantum Physics class, it is not like the kids are going to get a lot more out of it either! This is not to say that there don’t exist kids that would be interested in Quantum Physics or being exposed to it is not helpful. My point is that *most* – the vast majority in fact – wouldn’t get much out of even a well-taught Quantum Physics class in college. Might as well have some Feynman lectures on YouTube, and point the kids to it, and whoever is really interested, can come talk to the professor.
If you accept that college is mostly a waste of time (I am practicing my belief here in AdventNet – we actually have dropped college as a requirement for employment!) then the only thing I would find wrong with that YouTube class is that it is so damn expensive!
Sridhar
The criticism of the course here is as insightful as the dismissive comments coming from the news anchors in the clip posted on the course page. “Ha ha ha, kids getting credit for watching YouTube.”
Come on, Juhasz has dedicated her academic career to the role of video in social change. Take a minute to think about what her ambitions for the course are and about the role that consumer generated content has played in changing the dynamics of marketing and political participation in the past few years. Is that not worthy of academic analysis?
The decision to read the syllabus out loud accompanied by an illegible still shot of the document? Bad choice. But beyond that, done well, the course could be great.
By the way, I went to Hampshire College for my undergraduate degree, where the cracks are inevitably about taking ultimate frisbee for credit, so perhaps I’m a little more sensitive than others about snide comments about the education received at a small liberal (emphasis on liberal) arts college. No one ever seems to question the quality of the courses I took in pursuit of my Master degree from Harvard, but I probably got more out of those silly classes I took at Hampshire — hands down.
I wrote a post expanding on my view on this:
http://blogs.zo...ass-in-college/
Perhaps this class is a first step toward content analysis of YouTube? Wouldn’t the For Profits of the world really like to data mine YouTube’s content? Michael in past posts has lamented the inability of the tech world to provide adequate/ANY video search tools. You (Michael) can’t have it both ways. Deep tagging sucks – humans still have to provide the tags and therein lies the problem. Think of this course as the Mosaic of web browsers and where we are now. My Monday blog will expand on content analysis of YouTube in response to this posting here: http://www.thinkbeta.com/blog. I’m a lecturer in Entrepreneurship & Innovation @ Purdue University, BTW, and applaud Alex’s direction.
There really is a lot of potential in youtube, it just needs to be discovered. Many are now advertising there, like all other social media sites, to appeal to the correct users. Washington Post Ads+Yellow Book ads = out.
The lack of insight in this blog post is astounding. When I feel that something I’ve read on the Internet isn’t useful, I usually move on. This blog post is so staggeringly un-useful that I feel compelled to comment.
Here’s a summary of your post:
1. Point out that there’s a class about YouTube.
2. Quote a student saying YouTube is worth studying.
3. Provide an ad homenim attack on the intellectual standing of school providing the class (I suppose to discredit the student without actually addressing the substance of his comment?).
4. Point out that Stanford (a school you apparently respect) has a class about creating Facebook applications, true, but it’s useful because it’s focused on programming rather than cultural analysis.
Heh. The most amusingly bad thing about your post is that you’re actually re-creating the format of the class you’re supposedly critiquing. You post a link to a YouTube video, provide minimal commentary, and invite your readers to comment. You could, in fact, be a student at that very class, reading this blog post aloud and thus completing your assignment. At which time the other students in the class would probably roll their eyes at your poorly constructed arguments.
If practical programming (a la the Stanford class) is so obviously more useful than commentary on the culture of technology (a la the class you’re smearing–and your own blog), I should be reading more CodeProject and less TechCrunch. Time to rearrange my RSS reader. Buh bye.
Mike, Grow up you whining man-child. It’s not a wonder you still can’t get laid.
“Behind the populist rhetoric lies the mailed fist of vested interest.” – me
@36
See ya! (though I doubt you’ll actually rearrange your RSS reader)
and @Sridhar
College was a waste of time for you? You should have picked a better school or saved yourself the tuition. I feel I learned almost nothing useful in high school (except how to take the SAT – talk about worthless), but college was a totally different story. Maybe it’s because I’m in engineering. I’ll grant that the humanities kids don’t do a whole lot
Let me get this right. Youtube which seems to have become popular enough to be a household word and the surprise feature on the iPhones, and also is a significant part of Google’s Australian election site that you went on and on about here: http://www.tech...-election-site/
is too paltry and unimportant a site to merit analysis and perhaps a course on it.
The only thing I can get from such a comment is that modern culture and politics is seen by you as being not worth analysis, which from a site that focuses on tech culture seems pretty sad.
This has nothing to do with Youtube and everything to do with Pitzer.
Mike is a petty man, who is having flash-backs of his college days doing keg stands at Wohlford, getting turned down by Scrippsies, and talking shit all day about Pitzer screaming Puck Fomona.
Yes, Pitzer is hardly an academically rigorous college, ok its closer to a high school than a college, but that doesn’t mean that a youtube class where you watch clips all day is that outrageous. Hell at the very least they’re generating page views and that means ad dollars . . ie. creating value.
Mike,
Must say I lost some respect for you on this one. Claremont McKenna isn’t the pinicle of the liberal arts world either, so I think it is kinda silly to put down an whole college over one silly class. I know this is not the first silly class to exist.
I think this quote pretty much sums it up
“If practical programming (a la the Stanford class) is so obviously more useful than commentary on the culture of technology (a la the class you’re smearing–and your own blog), I should be reading more CodeProject and less TechCrunch. Time to rearrange my RSS reader. Buh bye.”
I will probably take you much less seriously now as I know you are just looking to masterbate your ego at all costs, as you are tearing on a class that is only teaching something that you do every day of your life, e.g. “In addition to new companies, we will profile existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space.” (That is from your about page). I hope you feel good about this one.
I go to Pitzer.
I am not rich. I do not smoke weed. Drugs can be bought at POMONA. I am not taking the youtube class because I agree it is silly. BUT…I am getting an AMAZING education with great professors at Pitzer. (A school where last year 18 students received Fulbright’s and has been recently publicized on NPR for our new GOLD Leed certified environmental dorms). I am a double major in Neuroscience and Spanish. I do not take my education lightly, I am not an underachiever. Every school has a stereotype….but it saddens me that people take them so seriously. Pitzer, my school, is a liberal school where both students and professors can put new innovative ideas into action easily and where no opinion is not heard, what other college student can say that?
Oh and PS: a CMC student was stabbed a couple days ago….maybe you should write about why they carry knives to parties.
I go to pitzer. I smoke a lot of weed. I also do a lot of work. And I would just like to say that yes, this course is re-tard-ed. but you know what? I get the same, if not better grades when I take Pomona classes (3.5 gpa btw). I wonder why? maybe because my less than pretentious head is not shoved up my butt. I’ve taken classes at 4 of the 5 c’s (not HMC) and you know what? I go to stoner school, but in reality, who doesn’t? all private schools are big wastes of money, I know that now as a junior studying abroad at the University of Michigan, where my classes may be a little bigger, but they’re all the same. Undergraduate school is all the same. Whether your drug of choice is weed, whiskey, or ritalin. You’re paying money to take bullshit classes like youtube, or philosophy. whatever, neither are going to help you except for personal growth.
I think you guys are missing the point. The class is trying to look at youtube as it represents society, which sadly enough have come to the conclusion that society is stupid (no new news there) hence (some of) the above posts. They are trying to look at its potential and ways it can change and perhaps change society or the way we view it. I don’t know that that is an easy task. If you are all so concerned then perhaps you should be posting ON their site challenging them and asking these questions instead of hiding on a tech page…
god, this post was ignorant.
#27: “Studying a disruptive social, technological and economic phenomenon seems like what people should be doing in academia. Too often academic classes miss the opportunity to relate disciplinary studies to the world at hand.”
yes. exactly. i went to a middle school and high school in which the very idea of studying anything that happened post-1960 was ridiculous. that attitude of historical/academic elitism was ignorant, first of all, and ineffective at preparing me to confront the important issues of the contemporary world.
my first undergraduate class, in contrast, covered a variety of european films from the last forty years or so, and turned out to be both useful and interesting.
it’s absurd to think that academic study should not examine a prominent contemporary phenomenon like youtube. this class may need some fine-tuning, but is sorely needed in our increasingly technological world.
and so on.
I am a Pitzer grad. I’ll grant you that it is not as highly ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the other Claremont Colleges. It is, however, within the top 50. Is that not good enough proof that it’s a decent, well-respected school, with, perhaps, academically rigorous courses?
As a current student at Claremont McKenna College, I think it is rather sad that your level of critical analysis of this class does not rise above stereotypes and useless attacks on the college. If one puts to use some the skills that provided by a CMC or Pitzer education, it becomes clear that is class is more than fluffy offered to give place to students to lazy around for credit. Prof. Juhusz is, to take Hank Feeser’s comment further, analyze and challenge the content, but more importantly, the structure of YouTube as corporate-sponsored democratic media and how this limits the true diversity of voices that such a media promises. This class is an experiment in experiential learning about the limits of this popular platform. Although I am a student in the class, I am proud that the 5-C is a place radical enough to allow the exploration of these issues.
Being a Pomona grad, I think the criticizms are ridiculous. I do think this class is adventurous and lots can be learned.