In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article, Jeffrey Young suggests that the growing popularity of scholars’ appearances on YouTube and other video-sharing sites “may end up opening up the classroom and making teaching—which once took place behind closed doors—a more public art.”

Young reports that in the past few months, several colleges have signed agreements with the site to set up official “channels.” The University of California at Berkeley was the first, and the University of Southern California, the University of New South Wales, in Australia, and Vanderbilt University soon followed.

Adam Hochman, a product manager at Berkeley’s Learning Systems Group, reports that YouTube was surprised by how popular the colleges’ content has been; some lectures on Berkeley’s channel scored 100,000 viewers each, and people were sitting through the whole talks. Hochman asserts that some professors are “getting as many hits as you would find with some of the big media players.”

In many cases, the colleges were already offering the videos now on YouTube on their own Web sites or on Apple’s iTunes U, but college officials say that teaming up with YouTube is greatly expanding their audiences because so many people are drawn to the service already.

For more information, be sure to read the Chronicle’s full article or check out Open Culture’s post on the topic.