Through October 15, there is a CUNY-wide trial to Intelecom. This database offers a collection of streaming videos in the following areas:
- Adult Basic Education
- Environmental Studies
- Health
- History
- Oceanography
- Philosophy
- Political Science
- Psychology
- Sociology
A link to the database can be found in the usual location on the Trials tab on the main databases page. To login, you’ll want to use the user name and password that are visible when you mouse over the link on the Trials tab.
Feel free to share news of this trial with any faculty who might be interested (and give them the user name and password info in your email). Feedback should be sent using the online form on the Trials tab.
I found myself surprised by this trial. I ended up liking it more than I expected I would. The videos are mostly talking heads, which isn’t great, but boy howdy, did they get some good talking heads! Noam Chomsky on language, Kay Redfield Jamison on depression and abnormal psych, Elizabeth Loftus on memory, Daniel Kahneman on consciousness, John Searle on mind, etc.
Clips are short and embeddable,, which is nice (not sure how authentication would play into the embedding function, though).
The collection is deeper than I imagined. For psychology, there are 527 clips. For philosophy, there are 339.
I can probably find similar content freely online but the process of tracking stuff down would be time consuming, and there’s no guarantee that what I’d find would be the right length that all these videos are (2-5 minutes on average).
I’d recommend we consider this.