Online and connected 4: Online Lectures on Sustainability

In the fourth installment of our series about how universities are using the internet to engage students and the wider community in sustainability, we look at the growing range of online platforms where students can hear lectures about topics relating to sustainability. But these are not only interesting resources for students, for faculty these can be interesting additions to courses but also the opportunity to post your own lectures and courses to gain a wider audience for your work.

As we have seen in previous blogs, there are several universities around the world that already post their lectures and courses online for free on their websites. This includes, but is not limited to, Yale, MIT, Open University. There are also several lecturers and universities posting lectures to popular online video sites, such as Youtube and Vimeo, for example from the University of California Berkeley.

ITunesU contains over 500,000 lectures and courses from leading universities and other schools, all free of charge. Several schools, such as INSEAD, HEC, Western Reserve University and the University of Warwick also have podcasts of lectures relating to sustainability available through iTunes.

There are several not for profits that are also providing a space to post and share lectures online. Academic Earth was founded with the goal of extending high-quality online learning opportunities to people around the globe. It contains a range of lectures available to listen to free online from the academics across the US. Udemy is platform where you can take a course (free or for a limited charge) or teach a course in any topic you like.

Khan Academy  is a library of over 2,600 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance and history. Khan Academy is a not for profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world class education to anyone anywhere.

Finally, TED is a not for profit devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading.” Its conferences bring together the worlds of technology, entertainment and design. The website provides a range of short (20 minute) videos on a wide range of topics including many relating to sustainability.

Have you contributed to any of these platforms? Are there others that you have or would like to contribute to? Share you views in the discussion area below.