The Project
Started in 2017 at the University of Genoa (Italy), with the acquisition of the domain YOUniversity.info, YOUniversity Project is a project of a universal portal of videos for enhancing critical thinking and sharing culture. The idea came from analyzing social networks of teachers (Academia Edu, Research Gate, Philpapers,….) where scholars share preprints or publications. Why not having a social network of students sharing reliable videos and discussing them? We watch and share videos and it is our normal environment. Why not having something reliable, selected, filtered? But Youtube already has a lot of videos! Indeed, too many.
1) The problem with Youtube is that there are too many contents. We may better enjoy the wide variety of YouTube results with a specific filter and a proper environment of discussion (more focused than YouTube discussions or Youtube filters). We offer a new kind of filter.
2) There are other resources for cultural videos and private websites too, which sell good hand-made lessons. We offer instead free contents with a guarantee of “university-based” continuous moderation.
3) It is difficult to find the right content in a fast way. We personalize the search results making it relative to the educational levels of users, through the registration information plus machine learning on users behavior.
4) Users are not left alone and will have the possibility of direct interaction with “human” experts (PhD Students or teachers through chats or video-calls).
We want to answer the general request for free reliable accessible culture, especially in the humanities.
Our innovation is a complex work of filtering contents: (a) different levels of categories taken from experts (an in top down tradition) and from folk (as in the bottom up tradition of long tail), (b) a series of specific information about each video given by definitions elaborated by users (c) a learning artificial intelligence algorithm to help individual retrievals (d) a selection of videos with graphics used for impaired persons (especially dyslexic disorder). Another general innovation is the creation of a bridge for the future of web culture: a systematic moderation of new information through connection with University environment. Eventually, we make learning easier, faster, funnier through the systematic use of video contents, divided in different levels, from the catchy cartoon to the traditional University lesson.
Youniversity is a universal portal for culture where videos will be organized by content and by other categories and connected with a different functions, from connections to living debates, books, interactions with experts.
Main Fields
– Anthropology
– Classics
– History
– Literature
– Linguistics
– Philosophy
– Psychology