YouTube lessons a big hit with UAE students

YouTube lessons are a big hit with students in the UAE and online classes are becoming increasingly popular.

Ever since the Khan Academy uploaded its first video on YouTube in 2006, the demand for educational content on YouTube has been growing reaching billions of views. Education is one of the fastest growing categories on YouTube today with 80 per cent of the views coming from outside the US.

Students with access to the internet are able to join any virtual classroom to learn and engage with their teachers in a new way. Content creators are now focusing on students from the UAE, Egypt and Saudia Arabia, featuring a variety of subjects from English and Science to Maths and the Arts.

Duroosi, a collaboration between the UAE Ministry of Education, Etisalat and Google provides free tutorials for students in Grades 11 and 12. The initiative aims at creating a YouTube community for pre-university students and teachers that surfaces relevant, easily searchable video clips teachers can use in their classrooms to enhance student learning.

The videos show a teacher on the left of the screen lecturing on the subject using a PowerPoint-like presentation.

Videos are 20 to 30 minutes long and cover a range of topics from science, to Math and languages. Its most watched content is biology, chemistry and English. The most popular lesson is a Grade 12 biology lecture on the human genome. In the first week of its launch, Duroosi got 17,000 subscribers. Today, it has 33,888 subscribers.

Duroosi added around 550 hours of unique Arabic education content. This is a growth of 200 per cent in educational Arabic content on Youtube in the UAE alone. It also added around 31 per cent of total Arabic content on Youtube within the last year.

Students now have the chance to learn and access educational content wherever they are and on whichever device they choose. With the growth of smartphone usage, Duroosi presents a unique opportunity for the young generation to expand its knowledge and have it part of its lifestyle.

muaz@khaleejtimes.com