YouTube to launch educational Courses in India

YouTube Courses is set to launch in India in 2023, taking formal online learning onto the video platform.

Announced at its annual event in India this week, the Alphabet-owned streamer says ‘YouTube Courses’ will launch as an online medium to share learning materials in the form of videos.

Teachers and mentors have long been on the platform offering video lessons for free, but now they will be able to join the YouTube Courses app and choose to offer free or paid-for lessons.

The app will allow teachers to organise their videos and provide text reading materials and questions right on the Courses app.

The feature will cover academic subjects as well as vocational interests, and viewers who buy a Course will be able to watch the videos without ads.

Courses is currently in beta and will be available for users in India soon, according to Google, and will represent a “new monetisation options for our creators.”

It has already partnered with several local creators such as LearnoHub, Speak English with Aishwarya, and Telusko to develop courses in various Indian languages.

The feature will also be rolled-out to viewers in the US and South Korea in 2023.

Also announced at the event, YouTube revealed that it is testing a new feature in India that will allow for multiple language options for a single video (rather than uploading separate videos for different languages).

Currently, the feature is only available for a selection of healthcare content on YouTube.

A small group of healthcare providers on YouTube will also soon be able to work with an AI-enabled feature called ‘Aloud’, which helps creators transcribe, translate, and dub original content in multiple languages. It did not specify what languages Aloud is covering at the moment.