By Candace Wofford
This week at SXSW EDU 2023 Danielle Bainbridge, assistant professor at Northwestern University and host of U.S. History to 1865, sat down with Maria Anguiano of Arizona State University, Hank Green of YouTube Channel CrashCourse, and Katie Kurtz the Global Head of Learning at YouTube, to discuss the latest learning platform. A partnership with Arizona State University and YouTube’s CrashCourse brings learning to a whole new level with the channel Study Hall. According to their website, “Study Hall is a new path to earning college credits before you even apply. Explore helpful videos about How to College and Fast Guides to Majors from a team of CrashCourse and ASU educators. Get started in college-level Foundational Courses. And, when you’re ready, claim the credit you’ve earned in the course from ASU, a top-tier university.”
To some, learning online sounds like a joke, especially when looking at the results of education during the pandemic. During the COVID-19 lockdown, studies show that most of the K-12 learning was lost, and some argue that a lot of college learning was lost as well. People didn’t know how to sit down at home and get on Google classroom. There was no motivation when there was still so much uncertainty. Children stuck at home with their families was not necessarily a healthy or safe environment and there were a lot of unknowns when it came to how the students should be kept accountable when they are sitting in crisis.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, while K-12 students showed a loss of learning, YouTubers had an increase in learning. Kurtz commented, “The scope of learning that happens on the platform is really remarkable. Of our 2 billion monthly logged in users, nearly all of them say they use the platform for knowledge and information. We want to empower those billions of learners to go further by breaking down barriers to high impact learning experiences. And when so much of traditional higher education struggles with student retention and persistence, we see the exact opposite on YouTube. We see learners showing up every day.”
Hank Green is the co-founder and CEO of Complexly, which produces SciShow, CrashCourse, and nearly a dozen other educational YouTube channels, and he also stars as one of the main educators in Study Hall. His material is perfect evidence of how when a person gets to start to learn for his own sake, because it’s something he is interested in, then he will actually stick with it until completion. This shift is different from learning, for example, the mandated curriculum in high school. High schoolers sit in classes every day learning material that is not applicable to them, especially when they have no vision for their lives after high school.
Of the population of people who have parents who went to university, 70% of them are likely to also go on to earn a bachelor degree. In the population of students who do not have a parent who received a higher education degree, only 20% will go on to receive bachelors degrees. This makes sense when you think of all the steps required to even get into college and all of the questions you have to answer along the way – what are the requirements for this particular college, how do I apply, what is the cost, what school within the university is being applied to and/or what major is being declared, what are those degree requirements, and so on and so forth.
Study Hall was formed to help take the mystery out of higher education. There are free videos to watch that include To College or Not to College, How to Choose the School for You, How to Pay for College, How to Choose Majors and Classes, and Finding Your Place to name a few. Once one decides to continue their education, they then have the option to sign up for prerequisite classes starting at just $25 each. They then take the course and learn from actual professors, all while turning in work on Google Classroom that gets graded by university educators. When the class is complete, if the student decides that they want to earn college credit from Arizona State University for the class they took, then they pay the $350 to get that added to their transcript, which is only a fraction of the cost of attending a 4-year college, and the credits are transferable to hundreds of schools across America.
Bainbridge added that the college application process “is not transparent so one of the things I really love about Study Hall is that it’s taking some of the traditional barriers of entry and lowering them for students and saying that we’re not now judging you based on what insider knowledge or access you have to know how to do the application, or how to fill out financial aid, right? We’re making all of that transparent. So that ultimately your success is dependent on your drive and your desire and not necessarily on these access issues.”
Anguiano explains how Study Hall works because it is a perfect partnership of three entities with specific skill sets that are complementary and don’t overlap: 1) the rigor of the world class, ASU faculty and instructional design, 2) the compelling storytelling of CrashCourse that also knows how to build communities of learners that support each other around that content, and 3) the universally accessible and open platform of YouTube.
Study Hall already has 350 high school partners that use the platform for its students to earn dual credit while they are also exploring options for their futures. The videos bring promise, hope, excitement, and enthusiasm into every phase of learning, which is critical when trying to tackle the challenges of creating a sense of community and belonging. By focusing on intentional pedagogy and figuring out who to invite in, the stakeholders have managed to put together a diverse set of faculty with different backgrounds, so when students show up to Study Hall, they can see themselves reflected in the content. The group members are very learner centric and consider themselves to be education innovators, equity warriors, and people who are not satisfied with the status quo because they know better things can be done for the students and community. As the pathways to higher education continue to shift, YouTube’s Study Hall is ready to answer the call.
Candace Wofford is a dedicated Longhorn who earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Texas. She has her MS in Marine Science with a focus on Reproductive Endocrinology. As an expert in the Social and Emotional Learning Field, she shares her passion to high-school students to inspire them to become the best versions of themselves. She is a mother of two beautiful children, Jace (5) and Piper Beverly (1.5) so together they are PB&J and she is happily married to her Action Sports Expert Hubby, Jade.
