The idea came from comparing social networks for teachers and researchers (Research Gate, Academia Edu, Philpapers,….) where scholars share preprints or publications. Why not having a social network for students, sharing reliable videos and discussing them? Watching and sharing videos is our normal environment. Why not having something reliable, selected, and filtered? Sure, Youtube already has a lot of videos. Indeed, too many, and this is the problem.
1) The problem with Youtube is that there is overabundance of contents. We may better enjoy the wide variety of YouTube results with a specific filter and a proper environment of discussion (more focused than YouTube discussions or Youtube filters). We offer a new kind of
filter.
2) There are other resources for cultural videos and private websites too, which sell good hand-made lessons. We offer instead
free contents with a guarantee of “university-based” continuous
moderation.
3) It is difficult to find the right content in a fast way. We plan to
personalise the search results to the educational levels of users, through the registration information plus machine learning on users behaviour.
4) Our plan for the future is not to leave users alone and let them have the possibility of
direct interaction with “human” experts (PhD Students or teachers through chats and video-calls.
We want to answer the general request for
reliable accessible culture, especially in the humanities.
Our innovation is a complex work of filtering contents: (a) different levels of categories taken from experts (an in top down tradition) and from folk (as in the bottom up tradition of long tail), (b) a series of specific information about each video given by definitions elaborated by users; (c) a learning artificial intelligence algorithm to help individual retrievals; (d) a selection of videos with graphics used for impaired persons (especially dyslexic disorder). Another general innovation is the creation of a bridge for the future of web culture: a systematic moderation of new information through connection with University environment. Eventually, we make learning easier, faster, funnier through the systematic use of video contents, divided in different levels, from the catchy cartoon to the traditional University lesson, put to specialise seminars and talks.
Youniversity will be a universal portal for culture where videos will be organised by content and by types, and will be connected to living debates and interactions with experts. Now we are a small society promoting the first step of this vision:
https://youniversity.info/
