No ads, no awkward video suggestion autoplays
YouTube is home to billions of videos. Most of them are of dubious quality, so one would hope Google’s algorithms would bring users substantive and enjoyable content. Of course, there are many challenges surrounding the platform — especially when we’re talking about kids as viewers and educators as creators. That’s why the company is announcing a few big changes for those user groups, including a video player dedicated for educational use.
YouTube’s new Player for Education will allow any embedded videos onto specific online educational platforms to run free of ads, external links, and outbound content suggestions. The player will be available to lesson planners at Purdue University, Purdue Global, and EDpuzzle for use on their proprietary platforms as well as customers on Google Classrooms.
Educational content creators that have found success on YouTube have usually turned to external partnerships like ones with Brilliant or CuriosityStream to either help fund large projects or produce structured courses. But from next year, YouTube will be an option for these creators as they open up Courses: free or paid sets of videos that can be watched ad-free and accessed in perpetuity. Creators in the US and South Korea will be able to take advantage of the Courses program first.
Furthermore, creators will soon be able to post Quizzes up to their channel’s Community tab. Answers can link back to a specific timepoint in a relevant video. This feature will be in beta testing for a few months before going public in 2023.
