When Alexandra Juhasz began teaching a class about YouTube in 2007, journalists poked fun at the Pitzer College professor. Academic credit to watch goofy kitten videos? TechCrunch, a popular blog, said it might be the most ridiculous class any college had ever offered.
But Ms. Juhasz, a professor of media studies, felt that her students needed to participate in this new medium in order to critique it. The same was true of her work: Academic writing on YouTube demands videos, not just words.
That idea got a major boost this month when the MIT Press released Learning From YouTube, a free “video book” that was written by Ms. Juhasz and grew out of her class. It’s the first time the press has published an online-only book, and it helped developers build a new platform for authorship that they hope will be used for more such works. It’s also a test of academic waters: Will similar publications, backed by established presses, count toward tenure?
(You can read the rest of this story on The Chronicle’s site.)
It’s a great experiment. And a fine moment for liberal arts campuses, exploring new forms of scholarly communication.