Irish computer lecturer is a YouTube hit

21 Oct 2011

Dr Eugene O'Loughlin

A lecturer at the School of Computing at National College of Ireland has become a YouTube hit, clocking up more than 500,000 views and more than 15,000 viewers a week.

Dr Eugene O’Loughlin established his YouTube channel in 2009 as a learning and revision aid for his own students.

O’Loughlin’s channel, ‘Learn with YouTube’, provides two main types of educational videos: Problem-solving techniques, such as Google Storming, PEST Analysis, Flow Charts, and Cost-Benefit Analysis, and “How To” videos which teach students tasks like embedding video in PowerPoint presentations, creating Pareto and Gantt charts in Excel, and creating YouTube-ready videos in PowerPoint.

To date, the channel has 53 videos with more than half a million views in just two years. Currently, more than 15,000 people of all ages are viewing the channel each week with upwards of 500 subscribers.

Worldwide phenomenon

“In just two years it has grown to reach students far outside NCI’s walls, with students from all over the world tuning in each week,” O’Loughlin said.

“I post videos on topics that students might find interesting and useful. Most videos relate to subjects that I teach at National College of Ireland, such as project management and business analysis.

“Students love short videos that they can learn from – they can pause and rewind at any time to go back over the material covered. To date, the most popular video is ‘How To … Create a Basic Gantt Chart in Excel 2010’, which is currently viewed over 2,000 times per week.”

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com