Founded in 2009, Academic Earth is an online video lecture provider. The company, founded by Richard Ludlow, Chris Bruner, and Lian Pasano, has an interface similar to on-demand video streaming service Hulu. The company has since been acquired by Ampush. The company’s headquarters is located in Houston, TX.
Course Offerings:
The subjects covered in the video lectures in Academic Earth include a large number of academic fields. Students interested in subjects from the humanities, the sciences, business, art and design, and technology fields will find lectures of interest on Academic Earth. The video lectures on Academic Earth are available at no charge to the user.
Academic Earth offers 750 online courses and 8,500 individual online lectures for its students to use. These courses are divided into the following categories and sample subfields:
- Art and Design
1. Architecture
2. Art History
3. Design
4. Film Studies
5. Video Game Design
- Business
1. Accounting
2. Entrepreneurship
3. Finance
4. Management
5. Marketing
- Engineering
1. Biomedical Engineering
2. Chemical Engineering
3. Electrical Engineering
4. Mechanical Engineering
5. Systems Engineering
- Humanities
1. History
2. Literature
3. Philosophy
4. Religious Studies
5. Writing
- Medicine and Healthcare
1. Dentistry
2. Disease and Epidemiology
3. Healthcare Administration
4. Nursing
5. Nutrition
- Science & Math
1. Biology
2. Chemistry
3. Computer Science
4. Mathematics
5. Physics
- Social Science
1. Economics
2. Education
3. International Relations
4. Political Sciences
5. Sociology
- Test Preparation
1. ACT
2. GMAT
3. LSAT
4. MCAT
5. SAT
Additional Content:
Each section offers students access to additional materials related to the subject matter. For example, students who are exploring the Management section of Academic Earth will be able to access a variety of journals and trade magazines in addition to materials related to internships, student and professional organizations, grants, and scholarships. In essence, this makes Academic Earth an option for students who are not specifically interested in taking MOOCs at this time.
Video Electives:
In addition to scholarly materials from a variety of academic institutions, Academic Earth has now begun to offer its own brand of “Electives” that do not necessarily fit into a particular field. The website states that they are intended to “spark” the “intellectual curiosity” of the user. Below is a sampling of the video electives offered through Academic Earth:
- TL;DR Atlas Shrugged
- TL;DR Fahrenheit 451
- Born Republican? Born Democrat
- The Internet Knows Bitcoin
- How the Internet is Changing Your Brain
- How the End of World War II Made Us Fat
- Too Much Too Soon: The Anti-Vaccine Fallacy
- How to Start Building a Great Protagonist by Peter Bacho
Universities Providing Lectures:
Academic Earth has implemented a large number of open source videos from a variety of universities:
- Carnegie Mellon University
- University of California, Berkeley
- University of California, Los Angeles
- University of Michigan
- Harvard University
- University of Notre Dame
- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Princeton University
- University of Oxford
- Stanford University
- University of Houston
- Yale University
- Columbia University