The University of California at Berkeley now provides a number of full course lectures and other special events on YouTube. The school has its own YouTube channel with over 300 hours of video. Some of these videos his include lectures on bioengineering, physics, chemistry, peace and conflict studies, as well as other topics.


The university has been offering webcasts of its courses and events online since 2001 and added podcasts in 2006. It also offers a number of audio lectures through iTunes U. According to Berkeley, it is the first university to make full courses available through the YouTube.


Offering audio downloads or webcasts of lectures is not new to academia. Many colleges partner through iTunesU or host their own sites for students to access lectures. Some universities offer the lectures free to everyone not just their students.


Unfortunately many hospitals still block YouTube despite the ever growing amount of helpful, educational, and medical related content. If they are blocking it because of bandwidth that is one thing. However, there are IT departments that block YouTube while allowing other media downloads from other less popular/infamous sites. One has to question whether it is bandwidth issue or content issue.