With the increased use and demand for video in distance learning and the popularity of video services such as YouTube, I wondered what role these video-sharing services could play in an educational environment. Often an institution may not provide internal video hosting or time requirements may not allow the instructor to go through the centralized service and still meet the needs of the class. In these cases, a video sharing service can provide the solution for hosting and sharing the videos.

Clearly YouTube is the most well known of the video hosting platforms—but is it the best for educational use? Several competitors are slowly gaining an increased audience and are attempting to differentiate themselves from YouTube by providing a better user experience and/or unique set of features such as subtitling or editing.

I want to compare the leading video-sharing networks from an instructor perspective and find which one site is best suited for use in an online classroom. The first step was to eliminate the sites that I didn’t think would fit into an educational setting and thus were not worth comparing.

Elimination Criteria

The following criteria were used to eliminate certain video-sharing sites from consideration:

Ad Networks: I eliminated Revver and other sites that were primarily ad networks that embed ads into the uploaded videos and provide no opt-out option.

Site Editorial Control: Sites that must approve content before it is posted were also eliminated from consideration. For example, VideoJug was eliminated because they maintain strict editorial control of all posted videos and will take down any video that does not meet its site requirements of a “How To” Video.

Cost: I will only evaluate free video sharing sites. I excluded pay sites and will not evaluate features that are only available to upgraded accounts.

Which Sites Will Be Compared?

After applying the elimination criteria, these are the sites that were chosen to participate in the showdown:

The Next Step

In my next post, the sites will be ranked from 1 to 14 (1 being worst, 14 being best) based on how well each one meets specific evaluation criteria. Important or crucial categories will be given a multiple to give them extra weight in the rankings. The cumulative scores will be tabulated and the site with the highest score will be declared the winner.