In recent years, YouTube has launched a number of initiatives and features for learning on the platform. In addition to educational videos, the company has set up a $20 million fund for creators to create advice-free playlists on subjects like math, science and music. Among such initiatives, online video platform YouTube is going to launch a new ad-free video player and ’embeddable video player’ feature with various educational course topics. The platform built this player to show and serve new content to users without YouTube’s ‘recommendation algorithm’.
Tech site Verge reports that the feature could be great for educational content creators and organizations. Select organizations will initially be able to use the new player ad- and advisory-free. These include educational technology companies like EdPuzzle, Google Classroom, Purdue University and Purdue Global.
In a blog post, YouTube said the new feature removes various ads, external links and content suggestions, so viewers can avoid various types of ‘distracted content’.
YouTube has already announced several new tools for creators to create educational content on the platform, including ways to collect money from viewers for watching videos. From next year, certain creators will have the opportunity to sell ‘courses’ for free or for money, where a playlist of videos will be arranged for the audience.
Thanks to the new feature, a viewer who buys a course will be able to watch the content in an ad-free player and play videos in the background. These courses will first come as beta versions in the US and South Korea.
In addition, creators will be able to launch quizzes on educational content on their channel’s Community tab through the newly announced quiz feature. The company will launch all these quizzes in beta version in the coming months. Manufacturers will get access to this feature by next year.
