Academic Earth is a website launched on March 24, 2009, by Richard Ludlow and co-founders Chris Bruner and Liam Pisano,[1][2] which offers free online video courses and academic lectures from the world's top universities such as UC Berkeley, UCLA, University of Michigan, University of Oxford, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale.[3] It is considered a search engine for full-text scholarly information, with video courses covering around 50 primary subject disciplines[4] ranging from Arts and Design, Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, Engineering, English, Entrepreneurship, History, Humanities, Law, Mathematics, Medicine, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, and Statistics.[5]

History

The idea behind Academic Earth came to Ludlow upon stumbling on a full video course lecture from MIT Mathematics Professor Gilbert Strang. Doing further research, he found out that there are various academic resources online, although these resources were scattered across different websites and in varying file formats. Patterned after Hulu, Academic Earth serves as an easily accessible repository for online academic lectures.[2] The platform is also likened to what Google was trying to do with its defunct Knol project,[6] which aggregated scholarly articles. It was launched two days before YouTube introduced its own YouTube EDU service.[7][8]

The website also offers online courses, but unlike their formal versions, Academic Earth only publishes sorted video courses and sends users to the academic institutions offering them if they wish to complete it.[9] Participants also have little interaction with educators and with each other.

On January 10, 2012, it was announced that Academic Earth has been acquired by Ampush.[10]

References

  1. ^ "Academic Earth Launches Website Offering Free Video Lectures from Leading Universities". Reuters. March 24, 2009. Archived from the original on September 2, 2009. Retrieved 2009-08-22.
  2. ^ a b Rao, Leena (2009-03-24). "Academic Earth Is The Hulu For Education". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
  3. ^ "Academic Earth: Universities". Archived from the original on 31 March 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
  4. ^ Li, Lili (2014). Scholarly Information Discovery in the Networked Academic Learning Environment. Oxford: Chandos Publishing. p. 179. ISBN 9781843347637.
  5. ^ "Academic Earth: Subjects". Archived from the original on 2009-03-28. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
  6. ^ Manjoo, Farhad (2009-02-19). "How To Go to Harvard for Free". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved 2018-09-27.
  7. ^ Albers, Markus (2010). Meconomy: How to Reinvent Ourselves for the Future of Work. Berlin: epubli GmbH. p. 83. ISBN 9783869318868.
  8. ^ Pash, Adam. "YouTube EDU Brings Free Education to the Masses". Lifehacker. Retrieved 2018-09-27.
  9. ^ Arntsen, Tara (October 28, 2004). "Academic Earth: Free Education for All". TESOL International Association. Retrieved 2018-09-27.
  10. ^ "Ampush Media: News". Archived from the original on 2012-07-26. Retrieved 2012-01-26.

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