Wired Campus reports that YouTube have began testing a new feature that lets users download videos posted to the site rather than just watching the videos in a streaming format.  Universities are making their lecture videos free using Creative Commons licenses.  The unis involved so far include Stanford, Duke, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UCTV.

Scott Stocker, director of Web communications for Stanford, said the university had made audio and video content available for download through Apple’s iTunesU since 2007. But Mr. Stocker said that iTunesU and YouTube attract different audiences: Users of iTunesU generally search out content to download to their devices, while YouTube users stumble upon content through videos embedded on blogs or links shared among friends.

At this stage, the available lectures are skewed towards the Sciences and Human Sciences.  Subjects include Darwin’s Legacy (10 lectures), Introduction to Robotics (16 lectures), Environmental Law (28 lectures), General Psychology (25 lectures), and Education for Sustainable Living (8 lectures), to name just a few.

Those interested in graduate capabilities might want to check out this 30 second marketing video on creativity at Stanford:

Filed under: Graduate Capabilities, Learning and Teaching Resources, Technologies by Agnes Bosanquet