YouTube has evolved from a rather straightforward video-sharing platform to a global supergiant that attracts an estimated 122 million users daily. The platform boasts new uploads amounting to 500 hours every minute. This equals just over 34 years’ worth of content in an hour.
The most searched keywords show that the platform is home to everything from entertainment to learning, with educational content experiencing massive growth in recent years. In fact, YouTube has become a substantial database for anyone looking to improve a skill or learn new things.
Come along with us as we look into how you can leverage YouTube to boost your knowledge of almost any subject by using the website’s features and unique tools to your advantage.
Learn to Search
The first step in taking advantage of YouTube’s educational content is finding it efficiently. Knowing how to search the platform’s mass of content is a skill that can easily be honed and perfected, giving you the ability to find what you’re looking for more quickly.
One of the most important things when searching is to be very specific. This means using targeted keywords and syntaxes rather than general terms. For instance, when searching for a video on how to service a car, don’t search ‘how to service a car’. Instead, be specific about the year, make, and model of the car with a query like ‘how to service a 2022 Ford Fiesta Ecoboost’.
By being more specific in your searches, you’ll not only weed out videos that could be of little relevance to what you’re really looking for but also narrow down the results to information that will be most helpful. As your searching continues, you’ll also get better at knowing what search terms work and which to avoid, making finding new educational videos even easier.
Finetune Your Algorithm Through Subscriptions
Like many other entertainment platforms, YouTube uses an intuitive and intelligent algorithm that looks at what you’ve watched in the past to predict what you may enjoy watching in the future. This algorithm then suggests certain videos to you to make finding content you’re interested in easier.
One of the YouTube algorithm’s most significant influencing factors is the channels you’ve subscribed to and content you’ve liked. Therefore, subscribing to any educational channel that you’ve previously used to learn new knowledge will cause the algorithm to look for similar informational content.
Soon after the algorithm kicks in properly, YouTube will begin recommending new educational channels and videos that you may be interested in. Subscribing to these channels can also help you find more information you want to learn about and turn your YouTube into an information epicentre.
Create Playlists that Highlight Your Interests
Aside from leveraging YouTube’s algorithm to your advantage, the ability to curate your playlists is another way to boost your learning potential. This is because you can create specially crafted playlists for various areas of interest and their related learning materials.
By searching educational content and adding it to specific playlists, you can have the information you need on hand when you need it. Many channels also create unique playlists that feature various videos that work together, much like a course. Finding these playlists can help transform your regular watching into informative learning sessions.
Take Advantage of YouTube’s Learning Features
Because YouTube has become such a popular platform for learning new skills, Google (which owns the site) has launched many unique features to help users learn. These learning features are available to all users and can significantly increase their ability to acquire new knowledge.
Chapters
Chapters, launched in 2020, split longer videos into unique snippets using timestamps that define what is being spoken about in various parts of the video. This is particularly helpful for educational videos, as it allows you to quickly jump to the part of the video that has the information you’re looking to learn.
Transcripts
First appearing in 2009, transcripts provide a written account of almost any video. These allow you to listen to the lesson being taught and read along for better understanding. Where sound quality may not be clear, these also help ensure you don’t miss any critical points being taught.
Closed Caption
Also appearing in 2009, YouTube began generating automatic closed captions for uploaded videos. Alongside making videos with lousy sound easier to understand, the ability to read captions in a language other than the one in which the video is presented has made learning content significantly more accessible.
Playback Speeds
Another fantastic feature for learning, first introduced in 2010, allows you to control how fast (or slow) a video is. This lets you slow down the content to make sure you don’t miss anything and understand it fully, which is particularly useful for learning how to play musical pieces. Inversely, it allows you to speed up things you may already know about but want a refresher.
YouTube Courses
Still in beta mode after launching in early 2024, YouTube Courses offers specifically curated playlists that help simulate effective learning experiences similar to what you’d get when registering for an official course. YouTube Courses are available in specific countries, offer paid or free options depending on the course developer, and are an incredible way to access new knowledge.
Engage With Others
The final tip to boosting your ability to learn on YouTube is to engage with community members on the platform. With millions of daily users, plenty of other opinions and understandings are available in the comments sections of educational videos. Therefore, engaging with others can help you learn new things or deepen your existing knowledge.
An added benefit is that just as one gambler can share a wide variety of exciting titles to play with another, those interested in the same things as you may share other videos to watch or ways to understand a particular topic. Engaging also allows you to share your knowledge with others to help them on their quest.
