YouTube has emerged as a hub for educational content in India, with videos related to Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) exams being the most popular category of such content on the platform.
In an interview with indianexpress.comJonathan Katzman, director of product management at YouTube Learning, said the video-streaming giant wants to ensure that all types of test preparation materials related to competitive entrance exams in the country, such as national qualifications, are available to users. Common Entrance Test (NEET) and Joint Entrance Examination (JEE).
“We see many creators within India especially leaning towards live sessions and solving students’ doubts before exams. They put the student front and center with an easy connection with the students, and make sure they have a very strong sense of community,” Katzman said when asked about the growing popularity of Indian exam-prep creators on YouTube.
Capitalizing on India’s growing demand for online educational content, YouTube recently announced a partnership with the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the government’s advisory body on school education, to launch several YouTube channels over the next few months.
These channels will carry educational content related to the curriculum of class 1 to 12 students. It will be available in 29 Indian languages, the company said.
YouTube partnership with NCERT, NPTEL
Apart from NCERT, YouTube said it is running 50 credential courses in collaboration with the National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL). The courses offered on NPTEL’s YouTube channels will focus on subjects as diverse as pure science, literature, sports psychology and rocket propulsion.
“Through this initiative, a pathway has been created for anyone outside the IIT system to be able to take the course on NPTEL’s YouTube channels and then complete the online certification on the NPTEL-SWAYAM portal and get a certificate from the IITs,” YouTube said. In a blog post, more courses will be rolled out in the coming months.
However, students and learners in remote parts of India do not have equal access to the Internet and other digital resources. According to the latest data from the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), only 24 percent of rural Indian households have access to the Internet, compared to 66 percent penetration in cities.
When asked how the YouTube-NCERT partnership will help bridge the country’s digital divide, Katzman said, “We look to our partners in India to ensure that those students get the right access to technology, whether it’s a phone or a computer in school. Shared resources at home.
“Our job is to democratize knowledge, enable any creator, be it new or established, to deliver the right learning content and work with partners like NCERT, NPTEL, and CBSE,” he said.
AI features to enhance learning
In addition to partnering with educational bodies, YouTube is also looking to make learning more accessible in India by offering AI-powered features. “We’ve spent a lot of time at YouTube and Google figuring out how to use AI to make learning really good for our users and how to do it in a way that enhances user learning and doesn’t take away from them,” Katzman said.
The platform is bringing a new learning feature called Key Concepts to India. This feature uses AI to identify concepts included in a video and provide definitions of those concepts from the web. It can cover concepts related to different subjects like biology, physics and chemistry.
“We use AI to understand how the creator talks about that concept and weave that story together for learners so they can fully understand what’s going on in that video,” Katzman said.
Based on the video’s transcript and its metadata, YouTube will also display images from users’ definitions and Google’s knowledge graph.
To help students test their knowledge, the platform is introducing AI-generated quizzes. The quiz questions will be based on the topics of the videos the user has watched and will appear after the company has watched the video.
Asked whether AI chatbots and personal AI tutors could prevent users from going to YouTube to consume educational content, Katzman replied that learning purely from a chatbot is very difficult. “It’s a lot of text to read. You really need to understand what the right questions are, which you don’t need to know with YouTube videos and our creators.”
“Students and learners really like having that personal connection. They like learning in a community and being able to talk to other students in the comments and talk to the creator. It helps them understand the material,” he added.
In response to whether AI could take teachers’ jobs, Katzman argued, “We’re not trying to replace teachers. It’s about helping institutions partner with their teachers, provide them with better learning materials, and enable students to learn more easily and do a better job of teaching.” It’s more about enabling.”
Reliability of Educational Materials
Asked how YouTube is ensuring the accuracy and reliability of educational content on its platform, Katzman said its built-in features such as AI-generated quizzes undergo “a lot of testing and a lot of evaluation” but not exhaustively.
“If something is published incorrectly, we are able to remove the content very quickly,” he said. “In terms of content that creators publish, that’s required to play by our community guidelines,” a YouTube executive said.
Digital safety and education have been at the center of debate since Australia banned children under 16 from using social media. While the ban is yet to be implemented, it is possible that YouTube will be exempted as it is considered a “classroom staple”.
Asked whether such an exemption was justified for YouTube given concerns about growing screen time and content moderation, Katzman only referred to the company’s official response and said, “It’s not an area where I’m highly qualified to inform you.”