While many of us use YouTube to watch the latest songs, videos, stand-up comedy shows, missed serial episodes, news, etc. there are millions who use it as a platform to learn.
In fact, the demand for quality tutorials or educational content on YouTube has become so huge. Also, the number of educators using the platform to reach out to their audience has grown exponentially over the years.
Well, thanks to the growth of search for learning content on YouTube, which has been largely organic, its popularity and huge demand have been now noticed by Google and the company is now beginning to encourage it, shape it in the right direction. It started investing in creators to help develop high-quality educational content for the learners on its video-sharing platform.
Recently, Google, which owns YouTube, hosted its second edition of EduCon in New Delhi where it brought under one roof over 200 learning creators who make videos explaining subjects, course contents, help Indians learn English, and prepare for competitive exams. During the summit, YouTube awarded eight Indian creators with the YouTube Learning Fund to help develop high-quality educational content for its platform.
The eight creators who received the fund include ExamFear Education Hindi, Learn Engineering, Don’t Memorize, Study IQ Education, D’art of Science, Learnex – English Lessons Through Hindi, GetSetFlySCIENCE, and Let’s Make Engineering Simple.
These creators are developing high-quality learning content, covering topics like English language training, environmental science, political science, calculus, genetics and chemistry in English, Hindi and Tamil. Many of these channels already have millions of followers.
Don Anderson, Head of Family and Learning, YouTube APAC, reportedly told media that a combination of content, community and platform is how YouTube was focusing on bringing high-quality learning content to its viewers.
“When we look at it globally in terms of what we are trying to build and enhance here, we look it across content, community and platform. And our investments have remained and the efforts that we are putting into this are to support each of these pillars.”
“We had EduCon as a big pillar for creators to get together and connect so that is to build the community. The next is the content, which of course supports the creators too. So last year we announced the Learning Fund and number of Indian creators were recipients of it. The Learning Fund was really a call for proposals to look at how to produce or how we could fund the production of high-quality multi-session content.”
To highlight the educational content, YouTube has also recently introduced a new feature called ‘Learning Playlists’ to provide a dedicated learning environment for people who come to YouTube to learn. Unlike the usual page, the watch page of these playlists does not show any recommendations, allowing users to focus on the content that they are learning instead of getting distracted by other videos.
It seems Indian creators have contributed a significant amount of content to the learning playlist. “India has contributed 98 lessons in learning playlist and Indian creators contributed 10 of those learning playlists. And those 10 playlists came from four of the creators that we funded,” Anderson reportedly said.
Needless to mention, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki had last year announced a $20 million for YouTube Learning as a part of which the video-sharing platform would support creators who create educational content for the company. Google-owned YouTube has over 265 million monthly active users in India.
