Faculty Spotlight: Bryan Enderle
Dr. Bryan Enderle, UC Davis Department of Chemistry Professor, started posting videos on YouTube in 2009. Today, his YouTube channel, EnderlePhD, has 2,840 subscribers and 1,516,544 video views.
Enderle started making the videos because he found himself repeating the same ideas at office hours and review sessions; he also knew that not all students were able to make it to these out-of-class meetings. “Students were always saying that they couldn’t make it to office hours or review sessions,” Enderle explains, “and I thought, well, what if I just record these things and cut them into clips by subject?”
And that’s precisely what he did. Using the departmental video camera, Enderle has created about 700 videos (approximately 200 per class). Initially, he posted them on SmartSite, but even with extensions he found he far exceeded the space limit. He looked for other options and decided on YouTube – “it’s a good medium,” Enderle explains, “because they’re on it anyway.”
At this point, Enderle says he’s recorded about “80% of what I want to do. I’ve taped all of my office hours and review sessions. I cut them into 2-10 minute segments of ‘answering this question’ and ‘talking about this concept,’ and then I created a playlist on YouTube according to the topic or textbook chapter title.” In addition to course content, Enderle records study tips and other bits of advice that he repeats in his classes.
These videos not only supplement office hours and review sessions – they’ve become part of Enderle’s day-to-day pedagogy. When he covers a topic in class, he references the videos as a “talking textbook – I cover something, give an example, and then say, if you want more examples, then there are three videos you can watch.”
As is evident from the number of hits, Enderle’s videos are not just for students in his class. “Students usually watch the videos even if they don’t have my class,” Enderle notes. “They got used to me and like the way the videos work.”
To view the videos by topic, visit http://www.youtube.com/user/EnderlePhD and click “” on the left navigation menu.